Story of a Prom Dress

Clarissa Rogers-Hamilton shares this story about her prom dress (see above), which turns out to be one of those "feel-good" stories that seem to surround our high school reunion.

She writes: My mother worked and she didn't have time to come shopping with me for the dress. She suggested I go around with some friends and look at dresses. When I saw one I liked she would meet me there and we would decide on buying it or not. Well, I looked and looked and couldn't find any I liked. At the time the net was popular and it was itchy.

I found one that would be OK, then I went to the upscale store and found the dress we finally got. I knew it was too much for my mother to buy; it was $85 and that was a lot then. I don't know what that would translate to in today's dollars, but it was a lot then. We went to the story with the itchy net dress and I tried it on. Then I said I had found one I wanted her to see on me, but I knew it would be too much. I just wanted her to see it.

Well, I put it on and she loved it as much as I did and put it on lay-away. I know she really sacrificed for that dress. A year or two later, my mother was working with a young woman who was raising her younger sister. The co-worker was having a problem in getting money for her younger sister's prom dress. My mother suggested my dress to her.

I don't know if she gave it to her or if she paid a little for it. My mother was the kind to give it away if she knew somebody needed it. Sandy got it for her sister, and she was so happy with it...wore it to the prom and felt like a princess, just like I did that night.

SlimFast and Oil of Olay

NOTE TO MALE READERS: You may want to skip this posting. It has to do with female readiness for the Reunion.

Carolyn Gramling-McAleese, who, it turns out CAN be part of a four-way reunion in South Florida Feb. 23, wants to pass along this information to the "rest of us girls" in the 1958 class:

I'm living on 180 calories a meal from SlimFast and I am conducting close consultations with Oil of Olay. She indicates that a thick layer of youth-restoring facial cream is part of her bedtime routine.

She also clicks off a checklist of fingernails, hair, eyebrows, special dress regarding "things to do" to get ready for the Reunion. We will let the White House solve the small problems such as the War in Iraq; we women will attack the big problems of cosmetics and hairstyles.

A South Florida Mini-Reunion

Following the tradition of our classmates in the Tampa Bay area and in Colorado, some of us in South Florida are doing our bit to get ready for the 50th anniversary.

Originally, the plan was for Carolyn Gramling McAleese, Sandy Creitz-Logue, and me to meet at Barbara Monrose-Parrish's home in Coconut Creek Feb. 23. However, Carolyn's son who is recovering from surgery in Sarasota needs her assistance, so it will be a three-way.

Carolyn has left strict instructions that the three of us are not to laugh, enjoy ourselves or enjoy any good refreshments. We are to save all that until Carolyn can be with us for the next time. She has threatened that she will be there in spirit and will know if we disobey orders.

However, as an alternative plan, I'm meeting with Carolyn tonight after my Monday night English class that's 5 minutes away from her place. I will take three of my Viking Logs (1955, 1956 and 1958) and we will re-discover people to our hearts' content.

Next Saturday, I will take the same yearbooks with me because Sandra's are stored at her son's place and Barbara doesn't have the 1955 issue (our freshman year, remember?)

If it weren't for the enterprising work of people like Sue Bagg-Foreman and Woody Reed Tanner, I wouldn't even know that these three women live within driving distance of me.

So, on Feb. 23, if you hear in the distance faint peals of laughter, it will be three Viking classmates in a pre-reunion reunion, practicing for the Big Time when we all meet in St. Petersburg in May.

Feedback from Clarissa Rogers Hamilton

Clarissa Rogers Hamilton offers these comments in an email, related to the phenomenon of our NEHS 1958 50th anniversary: I just wonder if any other 50th reunions has been so successful in contacting so many classmates. I know a friend took her mother to her 50th reunion and there were something like ten people there!! Of course I don't know how many were in her class, maybe only eleven!!

You are so right in what has come from just the planning. You mentioned what you have learned about diabetes from fellow classmates, then there is Barbara Menees. I did send her a card and did call her. She seemed so upbeat when I called her. ...Even if she is still in rehab, I encouraged her to come to the dinner in her wheelchair, if she wasn't up and walking.

I talked to Madelyn Ringlespaugh and I also found and talked with Jean Robertson. She said she is definitely going to the reunion; she was so excited!

When I met again with Ben Wall, it was like we graduated yesterday and just met for lunch. It is so easy, like time never passed, I was surprised. I would imagine it will be like that at the reunion, only more so since there will be so many more people. I took a neat picture of us, put him and I now and on the side, pictures from the yearbook. Also a picture of the front of the yearbook.

A Personal Thank You

If it hadn't been for my re-connected friends in this Reunion project effort, the recent two dark weeks I spent in diabetic problems might have been entirely different.

Mardi Kline and Charles Welch offered me invaluable tips on dealing with Diabetes 2. I have been diagnosed since 2000, but I had dodged learning to use the glucose meter because the technology intimidated me. My understanding of nutrition for the diabetic was less than basic.

An effective doctor, a change in medication, a crash course in learning to use the glucose contraption, and some verrrrry helpful information in emails from Mardi and Charles helped pull me through.

Amazing what a high school reunion can do for you!

Got Reservations?

Carolyn Gramling McAleese and I were having a phone chat a couple of nights ago, when we discovered that both of us had skipped the reunion held in 1978 for the same reason: we were both newly divorced, embarrassed to show up at the party where we'd have to explain that our marriages had gone bust.

We now realize that the classmates we meet at a reunion don't give a rip whether we've had one or two or four or no divorces. They don't care if we went bankrupt or flunked a course in college. They don't care if one of our kids may have been a frightful disappointment.

Instead....the friends at the reunion are just glad to see us. So, for whatever it's worth, if you're reluctant to come to the reunion because there may be some bad news in your background---we just want to see YOU. You can tell us what you want to about yourself and keep to yourself what you don't want us to know. Just come and be with us. The very fact that you've lived 50 years beyond high school graduation is an achievement in itself.

And besides, none of us are competing to be the youngest. We're all the same age anyway.

Carolyn and I will be helping to staff the Information Room at the Hampton Inn in St. Petersburg (Beach Drive)...and our goal is to help you get checked in to the Reunion, find people and information that you're looking for, and be of assistance in any other way possible. Let us be your startoff to an enjoyable re-connecting with people you knew a long, long time ago.

What Our Reunion May Mean to Barbara Menees

One of the most extraordinary spinoffs from the plans for our 50th anniversary reunion has been the spontaneous effort, instigated by Larry Britner, and followed up on by so many of you alums, to contact Barbara Menees.

Barbara has been confined, in very ill health, in a St. Petersburg convalescent home. When Larry visited her and sent out an email alert, many of you responded with cards, calls, prayers, best wishes--all of which must have been like medicine itself to Barbara.

Some high school reunions are big one-night or weekend events--and that's it. Our Northeast High 50th reunion has been so much more than that. Friends all over the world and all over the U.S. and all over Florida and all over St. Petersburg have become re-connected, discovering new things about each other that they never knew, finding fresh value and mutual interest in people they knew--and perhaps haven't seen--for 50 years.

Thanks to all of you who let Barbara know that she is not alone and she is not forgotten.