Laconia High School 50th Reunion

Ruth's high school class held its 50th reunion recently. Her account of this milestone event is the subject of this "Ruth's Neighborhood" entry.

Link to the Ruth Doan MacDougall Web site

The planning began a year ago. Between October 2006 and September 15, 2007, the members of planning committee of the Laconia High School Class of 1957 met about ten times to organize this unbelievable reunion, our fiftieth. We worked at classmates’ homes at a kitchen table, a dining-room table, in living rooms. Cilla Walker Clark and Verna-Jo Twombly Carignan-Sabbow were in charge, as they have been with previous reunions.

After the first meeting’s mailing of requests for information updates, the next several meetings mainly involved detective work, with committee members assigned names of people who hadn’t replied or whose mailing had been returned by the post office. We pursued leads and connections: “I know his brother-in-law, I’ll phone and ask . . .” “I saw her at the supermarket last summer, so she was still alive then.” We also discussed proposed menus and decorations. And a good part of the time was spent catching up on each other’s news, reminiscing, looking at the memorabilia some of us brought in, and laughing and laughing.

Also eating. After most of the meetings we went out to lunch, and at one of the meetings in her condo Cilla served up a soup-salad-cornbread feast.

When we had tracked down everybody who wasn’t in a witness protection program or some equivalent, we stuffed envelopes with a new mailing that included a reservation sheet. We made decisions about details, such as donations for the silent auction and a DJ for the Fifties music.

Then, at the last meeting, Jean Lakeman Charron and Joan Lakeman Morin, one of the two sets of twins on our cheerleading squad, announced that the cheerleaders who were attending the reunion would do a cheer. Protests from Carol George Gilson, Ruthie Brunelle McDonald and me. To no avail. I went into shock. Never before had cheerleaders done a cheer at our reunions! When Snowy in HENRIETTA SNOW realizes to her horror at her fortieth reunion that the cheerleaders will lead the school song, I Made That Up! (As I later told Penny, my sister, I felt like Stephen King said he did when he was hit by a car and realized he’d almost been killed by something out of one of his own books.) Jean and Joan decided on “T-E-A-M” and then they had another idea: We would enter using walkers. That would get a great laugh. Just as I was thinking with relief that it would be impossible to locate five walkers, Verno-Jo helpfully said she knew where she could borrow them.

Later that week, on Friday, September 14, the day before the reunion, the planning committee worked at the Opechee Inn Conference Center, readying it for the big night. I’ve described in my Ruth’s Neighborhood piece “LHS 45th Reunion” how this center was once one of the two Scott & Williams plants that inspired “Trask’s” in THE CHEERLEADER and how it is now owned by our classmate Ray Boissoneau. He donated its use for both the forty-fifty and fiftieth reunions. We began to decorate the Opechee Room, and of course I kept inadvertently referring to this as “decorating the gym.” We helped the twins lug in from Joan’s car the school-colors centerpieces of white chrysanthemums in red pots; we wrote name tags and place cards, put up bulletin boards, set up tables for various purposes—the Lakes Region Scholarship Fund, the silent auction, copies of the reunion yearbook.

When everything seemed to be organized, the twins made another announcement. In addition to doing “T-E-A-M,” we would also lead the singing of the school song. Oh. My. God. With Jean as captain, we rehearsed the song and the cheer. Jean and Joan were in sync. Carol, Ruthie, and I were not. Especially me.

Then of course we went out to lunch, this time at the nearby O Steak and Seafood restaurant, where we ate on the patio with a close view of Lake Opechee and a picturesque loon, and as always we talked and talked and laughed and laughed.

The next evening Don and I drove to the reunion. At the reception table, Leonard Corbin (my inspiration for Dudley Washburn) was hilariously helping Cilla and Verna-Jo, and the joint was already jumping. I took over for him, handing out name tags, and when everybody had arrived I went to find Don in the crowd between the bar and the white-tablecloth tables with red napkins. The total of people attending was 120; seventy-three were classmates from our class of about 150. Thirty-seven had died. When I mentioned the death figure to a professor who knows about these statistics, he said it was a normal percentage.

Instead of a buffet, this year in honor of the fiftieth we were having the meal served to us, and instead of people sitting wherever they chose, this year Cilla and Verna-Jo had decided to assign seating so that people could mix more. Each table was named after a teacher, with a photocopy of the teacher’s yearbook photo attached to a red stick in each pot of chrysanthemums on each table. The previous day, when we had written the name tags we had added the table name. Don and I were assigned to the Moynihan table, named after a shop teacher. The others there included Cilla and her husband, Chuck, and Carole Hunt Johnson and Skip Johnson, married classmates. During our chat, Skip told me that in high school he used to record radio music, and he’d recently discovered that he had some recordings of our high-school radio-club program, “Teen Tunes and Topics.” He had caught some voices along with the music, and he thought they belonged to Sally Smith Barrett and me! Needless to say, I asked him if he could find the voices again. He is now searching.

The young waiters and waitresses from O restaurant moved around tables, first with little salads of baby greens, dried cranberries, candied walnuts, and then with the entrees. We’d had a choice of beef, chicken, or fish, and for dessert raspberry cheesecake or liquid chocolate cake. During the “decorating the gym” preparations, we’d written the choices on the place cards, from the master list. Don and I had the fish dish, a huge piece of haddock with lobster sherry cream sauce.

Of course, as happens whenever I have to give an after-dinner speech, I couldn’t enjoy the food because of worrying over what lay ahead. When I had wailed to Don about the cheerleading, he had observed, “Football was never as complicated as cheerleading, I’ll tell you that.”

The dreaded time came before dessert. That was the only good thing. Jean rounded up Carol and Ruthie and me, still protesting, and herded us down a hall into a ladies’ room, a boudoir with dressing tables for use at wedding parties, etc., where the walkers had been stored. When Joan joined us, I realized that we all were in a sort of uniform: basic black. The twins were wearing dressy black sweaters with black pants; Carol wore a pretty black see-through blouse and black pants; Ruthie wore a black top, black pants, and gray blazer; I had on a black pantsuit.

We each grabbed a walker, Joan opened the door, and we heard Warren Mitchell at the microphone announcing that the cheerleaders would lead the school song.

So we made our entrance. The twins had judged absolutely correctly the enthusiastic reception the walkers would get. The crowd went wild, laughing, rushing from tables to snap pictures (which would show me beet-red with embarrassment and still out of sync). When things calmed down, we pushed aside the walkers, got into the old lineup, and Jean led us into our little intro—”Laconia Sachems!” clap-clap—and then the school song, with the old locomotive motion. Martha Stone Crane, our musical classmate who only recently retired from playing the French horn professionally for thirty years, has told me that the music for this anthem is taken from F. E. Bigelow’s piece called “Our Director.” To this we all sang:

Rah rah rah for old Laconia!

Banners wave on high.

We’re marching onward,

On to do or die! Rah! Rah! Rah!

Stern may be the conflict,

But we shall not quail.

Strong because united

We shall never fail.

And then Jean announced that because we’re a team in this Class of ’57, we were going to do the T-E-A-M cheer. More laughter. I got through it without falling on my ass. Amid applause we made our exit with our walkers.

I returned to the Moynihan table to find dessert served. Don had eaten his fill of his chocolate cake. I had some of that and my cheesecake.

The disc jockey began playing Golden Oldies. A few couples danced, and more people table-hopped and visited. Carol Sisson Vose and Becky Coffin Forbes came over from their tables and we had a chance for a good talk. Warren read out the names of who’d won what in the silent auction, and the evening drew to a close, the music continuing. The previous day, a sticker had been put under one chair at each table, to indicate that the person sitting there could take home the chrysanthemum. We hunted but couldn’t find any sticker under any of the chairs at our table.

Becky said to Don and me, “Go ahead, take it.”

I fretted, “But we don’t have the sticker.”

Becky ordered, “Take it!”

I said to Don, “See, just like when she bought the cigarettes on the Girl Scout trip to Washington, she’s leading me astray again.” It was wonderful.

As we left, I saw the twins doing a polka together to “Roll Out the Barrel.”

The next day, a red pot of white chrysanthemums sat on our front doorstep.

Photographs by Don and Ruth MacDougall

Posted: Saturday - December 15, 2007 at 09:26 PM

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Laconia High School 50th Reunion

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