High school reunions have become one way by which we measure, for good or for ill, what we have done and what we expect to do in the years remaining to us.

Certainly it’s true that reunions—whether they be for family, high school or college or military—represent remembrances of passages through seminal points in our lives. They mark not only the unrelenting passing of the years but also of experiences shared, whether because of blood and kinship or education or a common danger as in wartime.

Forty years after high school now. We sounded, and were, so young when we yelled “’67” at basketball games. But to pretend now you are still young would be ridiculous.

However, we Baby Boomers do cling, perhaps somewhat precariously, to the notion that we are not as old at 58 as our parents were at that age. After all, if, as “they” say, 40 is the “new 30” and 50 is the “new 40,” then in fact may not the upcoming 60 be the new 50 and even 70 the new 60?

We can carry this charade on for some time if we wish, but whom are we kidding? Truth be told, most people at my reunion looked pretty much as old as we are, within five years either way. But that’s life, too. Some of us age more gracefully than others, but you live with that, too.

The next reunion—at 45 years or 50—will almost certainly draw fewer people if age, distance and even the beginning of the infirmities of age have their way. But time blurs images and you realize that you will in fact never again see some people you thought you’d never remember anyway.

By and large, as far as I can tell from conversations over the two-night reunion gathering of the York Community High School class of 1967, we are doing well. No one’s in jail, no one’s a politician, which nowadays might be one and the same.

Most are still working, some doing very, very well but most of us, I think, normal working folks...some business owners, teachers, lawyers, a lot of execs and professionals, even car salesmen, and more women still working, by far, than in our parents’ generation. (As far as I know, I’m the only newspaper editor, which may say something, though what exactly I’m unsure.)

A few of us have retired. Most have kids who are grown with some now raising their own children as grandparenthood descends upon us. Many—too many, it seems, and again, a signal difference from our parents—have been divorced once or twice or even three times. There seem to be few April-September marriages.

But more than I would have imagined are working, and intend to keep working, for a long time. Few whom I spoke with talked of retirement. Clearly, we are a class that is going to go noisily, kicking and screaming, and not silently, into that cold night.

Echoing my own sentiments, a friend of 44 years who’s a college professor in Michigan said he’ll quit working when they put him in the box. Others have said they’ll have to keep working because they have to or simply want to. We expect no great riches from Social Security. But we are, I think, a generation that likes to work, a legacy perhaps of our parents’ Depression-era childhoods. I do see a vigor in my peers that belies our supposedly advancing years. 

I heard little regret from anyone for things not done but more so a willingness, even an eagerness, to accomplish things not yet done, to leave nothing unfinished, which becomes each individual’s race against time.

We have embraced change and do not shy away from the difficult or the different as I see some high school acquaintances embarking on new adventures. One who was on the high school newspaper staff with me has moved with his wife from Atlanta to Montana where they are happy with a new life and new jobs. Another friend, basically retired, is an assistant coach of high school football, basketball and baseball, making peanuts but really enjoying it. Another, widowed three years ago by a classmate-husband’s accidental death, has renounced any self-pity and lives for her children and her work.

We—the high school graduates of 40 years ago—know that there are many challenges yet to be met in life and work and we are ready for them, perhaps better prepared than any generation before, tempered as we have become by the joys and sorrows of real life and by the realities of the real world.

Contact editor Don Kopriva at dkopriva@thebusinessledger.com or at 630-428-8788.