HOPE — Class reunions may be out of date in the age of social media, but some members of the Hauser High School Class of 1969 say getting together every five or 10 years just isn’t enough.
Nearly a dozen former Hauser classmates have met once a month for a get-together since 2011, usually at an area restaurant where they catch up on each others’ lives and news. The most recent meeting was Aug. 22 in Columbus.
The reason they meet monthly five decades after their high school graduation is part of the long-term camaraderie that developed between students who lived and grew up in a small town such as Hope. As many as 15 of the classmates have met at one time or another over the years.
“In larger schools, you might only get to know the kid who sits next to you in a huge classroom,” Nancy Morrow Rounds of Nashville, Tennessee, said. “But many of us at Hauser had been together from first grade through high school.”
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So how large is the high school in Hope comparatively speaking? The 66 seniors who received their diplomas from Hauser last spring represented only 6.8% of the 965 high school graduates this year in Bartholomew County.
The baby-boomers who made up the Class of 1969 represented one of the largest classes in the Hauser’s history, with 110 seniors initially enrolled — and 99 receiving their diplomas at commencement.
The class also had the distinction to be the first to go through Hauser for three years since the facility replaced the old Hope High School in 1966.
Almost all Hauser students in that era spent six years in either Hartsville, Clifford or Hope grade schools, Rounds said. That is substantially fewer than the 11 elementary schools within the Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp.
Fewer grade schools means longer-term relationships among many classmates, Rounds said.
Another positive is that you don’t find a strong student hierarchy in small agricultural communities like Hope, said Barb Kinney Krebbs of Nashville, Indiana.
“Our class didn’t have these cliques like they have nowadays,” Krebbs said. “We felt like sisters. Even the guys felt like they were family.”
That comment may be true, since the former classmates said no two members of their class ever married each other.
Keeping in touch
There will always be people who refuse to attend reunions, Mary Ann Clem Davidson said. Many of them are still carrying old feelings of not fitting in, and fear they will be ignored or looked down upon because they weren’t athletes, cheerleaders or top scholars in high school, she said.
“But what they don’t realize is that after you grow up, none of that matters anymore,” Davidson said. “What we’ve learned from talking to each other is that we all had insecurities when we were young, and had to work to overcome them.”
A positive trait that seems to remain with Hauser students, parents, staff and alumni — often for their entire lives — is loyalty.
Margie Thayer Boilanger of Hope said she remembers when her parents gave her the option to either remain at Hauser or attend Columbus High School, which would not become Columbus North High School for another three years after the class graduated.
“My father said he’d pay for my tuition if I thought I could get classes in Columbus I couldn’t get at Hauser,” Boilanger said. “But I — not anyone else I knew — wanted to go.”
Vicki Burton Amos did pay tuition to keep her daughter enrolled at Hauser after the family moved to Columbus while the teen was in her sophomore year.
“I didn’t want her to get lost in a larger school,” said Amos, who now resides in Taylorsville. “Hauser has that family feeling. She got what she needed there, and graduated 10th in her class.”
There are plenty of advantages of being in a small school that a lot of people don’t realize, such as benefiting from the efforts of ordinary citizens, Boilanger said.
She cited the Student Fund of Hope, created in July 2018 by Stephanie Long and Whitney Budd, to primarily help children from financially disadvantaged families purchase school lunches.
Turning back time
Now in their upper ‘60s, the former classmates occasionally talk about their health problems. But Krebbs says the best thing about the monthly get-togethers is that they make her feel young again, Krebbs said.
“The first few times I joined this group, it was like I was 18 again,” Krebbs said. “Of course, when I looked in a mirror, I was immediately reminded that I’m not. But at least, I can ‘feel’ young when I’m with this group.”
Another classmate, Joyce Taylor Gillaspy of Crothersville, says her mind feels refreshed by being reminded by her former classmates of past events she had forgotten.
But Diana Phares Nolting says she mostly enjoys who and what her classmates are today — and wants to hear what is going on in their lives now, she said.
“We have lost several the last few years,” Nolting said. “So far, 16 members of our class have passed on. One was signed up to come to our 50-year reunion in May, but he died just two weeks before it happened. That was a hard hit of reality for many of us.”
Although it was sad news, it did motivate reunion organizers to make the event as memorable as possible, Nolting said. Activities enjoyed by the 68 in attendance included a sock hop, games, and food, as well as a memory tape to remember those who had died, she said.
“We wanted a special and fantastic reunion,” Nolting said. “We wanted to laugh and talk. And we wanted it because we felt that might be our last big celebration while most of us are still around.”
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Members of the Hauser High School Class of 1969 have met monthly since 2011. While it isn’t unusual for 15 former classmates to attend, the following 11 class members attended the get-together in August.
- Vicki Burton Amos, Taylorsville
- Margie Thayer Boilanger, Hope
- Mary Ann Clem Davidson, Columbus
- Joyce Taylor Gillaspy, Crothersville
- Barb Kinney Krebbs, Nashville, Indiana
- Wanda Manning Lucas, Columbus
- Pam May, Hope
- Pat May, Hope
- Diana Phares Nolting, Columbus
- Freida Thompson Robertson, Hope
- Nancy Morrow Rounds, Nashville, Tennessee
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