ARTICLE

A 'bad boy' writer goes home to Indiana for his 50th high school reunion. And loves it.

by Dan Wakefield

When I was a senior in high school, graduates from different past classes returned one day for their reunions, taking over the cafeteria. I remember noticing one table off to the side with just four or five elderly people, white-maned and wrinkled, slightly bent as they stood behind their display of yearbooks and memorabilia. One man stood behind a photograph of a high-stepping football player in the stripes of our blue and white Blue Devils uniform, yet I could see no resemblance between this grandfatherly gentleman and the dashing young ball carrier. A small white cardboard sign in the center of the table said simply "50th." That explained it. The handful of people who appeared to me like the ghostly survivors of some tragic shipwreck were the living reminders of the class that had graduated half a century before.

With a chilling feeling I walked on, thinking how sad it was that these poor souls had lived to be so old. Such a grim fate bore no relation to me and my friends, whom I couldn't imagine growing old, or dying, but thought would somehow reach the peak of human maturity and then simply merge into the universe.

Such memories returned as I flew to Indianapolis last June for my own 50th high school reunion. I'd skipped the 25th out of cowardice, having recently committed the cardinal sin of the writer who leaves home: publishing a novel (Going All The Way) that described the dating and social customs of young people who had graduated from a high school similar to mine. Scandal ensued, with gossip that I'd exposed the sexual transgressions of innocent schoolmates. When asked at the 25th reunion if he had read the novel, my classmate Senator Richard Lugar—our own favorite son of American politics—quipped that he had "received it in a plain brown wrapper."

Twelve years later, things had simmered down, and I went back to speak about the book under the unimpeachable auspices of the Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library. As I returned home with greater frequency, I began renewing friendships with many good pals from high school. When a movie based on the novel was filmed in Indianapolis in '96, I got 14 high school friends onto the set as extras, and felt my redemption was complete.

I looked forward to the 50th reunion, feeling a kind of pride that I'd made it this far and so had most of my friends (only one of our close circle was among the deceased). Similar emotions of pride, nostalgia, and mellowness must have struck most members of the class, for more than half of our 426 graduates, minus 67 deceased and 68 missing (unable to be tracked down by the reunion committee sleuths), attended the weekend festivities, coming from as far as San Francisco, Miami, and Atlanta. Johnny Lauter, our class president and former star halfback (now a retired vice president of American United Life), said this was the biggest turnout we'd ever had for a reunion, including the big 25th. His explanation: "A lot of people don't want to come to the 25th unless they're president of their company or have won a marathon. But by the 50th, nobody cares."

The theory rings true. The 25th is an occasion to show off your success or at least your good looks. A woman friend of mine who returned to a small town in Ohio for her 25th reunion told me she was driving to the event with a female classmate who started getting cold feet, and asked, "Why are we doing this?" She answered without hesitation: "Because we're not fat."

My classmate Jerry Burton looked fit and trim when he picked me up at the airport. My friendship with Jerry dates back to the time when we both were sunflowers in a kindergarten play, and on through grade school, Camp Chank-tun-un-gi, high school, and part of college—times when adolescent wounds and woes seemed bearable because of buddies who you knew were on your side.

We drove to our first event, a picnic at Victory Field, home of the Indianapolis Indians Triple-A baseball club, judged to be "The Best Minor League Ballpark in America" by Baseball America magazine. The sun was setting on the green of the outfield as we mingled over sandwiches and drinks, hugging and shaking hands with people we almost always recognized even if we hadn't seen them for half a century. The joy of hysterical high school giggling fits returned when Don "Moto" Morris grabbed my arm, pointing out that the current TV ads of young guys calling one another to ask "Whassup? in slurring buddy-speak was only a version of our own gang's language. Joined by Burton, Pete "Esty" Estabrook, and Dick "Ferdie" Falender, "Moto" and I bent our heads and stretched our mouths in the old "Hyyyuuuungg" call that signaled disgruntled girlfriends and, later, wives that we'd reverted to the nonsense zone of high school humor.

Excerpt
"Like most teenagers, we traveled in packs, and nothing in my life to that point made me feel so proud and part of things as being 'one of the boys' of my own great gang. We giggled and punched and sang and screamed and piled into one another's jalopies, circling the drive-ins like sharks before nosing into a slot at the Ron-D-Vu for french-fried onion rings and a chance to talk to the fabulous girls who ran in their own herds, feminine reflections of our own need and panic and joy. They were not just our loves but our counterparts and comrades on the teenage journey. We tentatively groped with words and feelings and thoughts as well as hungry mouths and seeking hands to connect, to know, to relate in our fumbling ways those ineffable messages burning inside us, to say somehow to one another—and in so doing discover for ourselves—who we were."
Excerpted from Returning by Dan Wakefield.

The next day we haunted the halls of good old Shortridge, and on Saturday night we attended our big banquet and dance at the new Indiana Historical Society building downtown—a reminder to us that we are history now. Senator Lugar was there with his wife, Char, and he looked in as excellent condition as he did when he ran the mile for the Blue Devils track team; the only difference in appearance was his snow-white hair. Lugar not only seemed to remember everyone's name, but greeted me by recalling my parents' names, and I countered with "Bertha!," his mother.

The unexpected star of the evening, though, was a classmate who felt he had something to prove—and dramatically proved it 50 years later. Harry (now called Ray) Gardner said he'd never had a date in high school, but later was told the way to meet girls was to take dance lessons; the advice was so beneficial that he became a professional dance instructor. In the reunion booklet he listed under Hobbies "Marriage (#5)," and brought the fifth wife , a svelte brunette in a black dress and black high heels whom he whirled with Astaire-like élan to the DJ's music after our banquet.

Gardner revealed his big secret in a dance instruction booklet: "the vast majority of the feminine gender will step completely over, around, and through the good-looking, well-built, even wealthy man to get to one … who knows how to dance. I'm living , breathing proof. I don't have a great bod … I'm not what you'd call attractive … and I sure don't have piles of cash. But women? I've had the pleasure of their company … literally thousands of them … for 40 years.

How much I needed Gardner's "big secret" back in high school (or anyone's secret) became especially clear when I met up earlier that day with one of the lovelies I'd had a crush on in the summer of '48. Full of reunion nostalgia, I took Jane Adler Bright for a pedal boat ride on the Indianapolis canal, a feature of the city's downtown renovation. Jane recalled the time in high school when I took her for a canoe ride and asked her to go steady.

"When I turned you down," she informed me, "you got so upset you threw up in the canoe, and I had to paddle us back to shore."

Reunions, of course, are all about bringing back memories, but there's no guarantee which memories will be evoked. Yet even the ones you've mercifully buried don't seen so tragic now—like failing to make the basketball team, flunking Algebra I, and throwing up in a canoe—which may be a reassuring sign of maturity, or simple the blessing of distance in time. Besides, I got through the boat ride with Jane this time feeling nothing worse than sore knees, and afterward her husband, Irv, gave me two Advil arthritis tablets to ease the pain.

Senator Lugar gave a gracious talk at our farewell brunch on Sunday, and topped it off by inviting us all to another reunion in Washington, D.C., the following May. Then, full of eggs, sausage, and nostalgia, we all stood and sang the school song, "In the Land of Milk and Honey/ in the central west/ stands a school of many virtues/ ranked among the best …" There were few dry eyes, and I saw my classmates and friends through a mist of memory and gratitude. Maybe all high school classes feel they're special when they make it to the 50th; as we stood there singing our song, we knew it.