Greetings from South Florida

Inspired by our Tampa Bay classmates, four of us (plus one spouse) held our first gathering today (Feb. 23) at home of Barbara Monrose Parrish in Coconut Creek. The reunion started around 10 am and went on for 4 hours before anybody picked up one of the Viking Logs to look at the historic photos.

Here's an update on Sandra Creitz-Logue, Carolyn Gramling McAleese, and Barbara.
Sandra, now living in downtown Boca Raton, recently retired as a high school social studies teacher and now heads her condo association. One of her recent victories was getting the needed repairs for the building following Hurricane Wilma. Sandra, Barbara and Barb's husband Wes Parrish all knew each other at University of Florida. Sandy later transferred to Florida Southern College in Lakeland to complete her education degree.

Sandra raised her two sons in Michigan and still "commutes" there frequently to spend time with them and her grandchildren. One of her "pranks" in high school was placing For Sale signs in front of Northeast High School.

Barb passed around childhood school photos of people such as Trudy Andringa, Madelyn Ringelspaugh, Aloyse Flood, Barbara Wells, and others. She also passed around a book that Dave Larson wrote, filled with anecdotes from his youth and from his marriage and family life with his wife Aloyse Flood Larson. (Editor's note: He's an excellent writer! In high school, he seemed to be an all-time guy's guy, but he was walking around with literary talent.)

Barb also shared a memory book that was produced for a Northeast reunion about 5 years ago, in which graduates from the classes of 1955, 1956, 1957 and 1958 all met together. Amazing photos, and once again, Sue Bagg-Foreman was one of the shakers and movers for the event. Former Northeast coaches Gerry Ramsberger and Lee Benjamin were speakers at the event.

For those of you (like me) who live in a "citified" environment--where vegetables come from the grocery store's produce department--Wes had an amazing vegetable garden--with real live plants growing in it. He's been doing this for the 30 years that he and Barb have lived in Coconut Creek, and his crops include large tomatoes, cucumbers, black-eyed peas, and lima beans.

One of the all-time funny stories shared at the gathering was from Carolyn Gramling McAleese. Seems that while she was enrolled in nurse's training at St. Petersburg Junior College and living in a dormitory at Mound Park Hospital, (now Bayfront Medical Center), she and her classmates encountered a very interesting person. The soft drink delivery guy who came to the dorm had a habit of ---shall we say, displaying his "assets" in public--and it only took the student nurses three months to report the offender to hospital authorities!