Ortonville High School
Class of 1961
40th Reunion
Doug Davis
I reverted to my role as class photographer on Friday and Saturday nights in Ortonville. A large group of us met at the Matador for drinks and dinner Friday. I took a number of snapshots, which you can see by clicking on the numbers and links below. This is just a beginning. If you send me copies of your photos (either digital pix I can link to this or prints I can scan), I'll try to beef this up.
On Saturday people started gathering at the RV Park to chat and eat hors d'oeuvres
around 5, and we sat down to a wonderful pork and chicken roast prepared by
Arlen Giese (with a little help from Don Verheul)
around seven. It was a marvelous evening, thanks especially to Sandy's
efforts (and with a little help from Bobby).
We reminisced about old teachers, retold stories about adventures we'd had in
shop class, or on the way back from Millbank, or exploring the river bottoms
at night with a date. We had a couple of older
visitors. We honored those who have survived serious illness and paid our
respects to those who haven't. There were a few serious moments,
and there was a point at which a bunch of the women were sitting in one corner
of the room looking at the yearbook while a bunch
of the men were standing in the opposite corner passing around Gerry
Grimm's pictures of the class trip. (Gerry, what about letting me copy those
pictures for the web page?)
I had the special pleasure of spending some extra
time with two of the guys I grew up with, Bob Thompson
and Dick Myerly, and to be hosted by John
and Audrey Tobin. Thanks: I love ya.
I felt again, as I have so often these last ten years or so, how lucky I was
to have grown up in Ortonville. As Robert Green '60 pointed out to me a few
years ago at one of the all class reunions, he and Roger knew that they needed
to go to the basement to pump water for a bath and that the rest of us didn't,
just as they knew when Roger hit the baseball through his window that Roy Geier
was richer than we were, but that it didn't matter. We were growing up as equals
in a place in which everybody had enough, and there was a high level of trust
and real friendship as a result. We have in fact lived very different lives
in the 40 years since we've left, and yet we understand and like each other
at a very basic level because of all we shared.
I'll be back in 2006, insha'llah.
