How it felt after returning 25 years later to high school...

Thanks for the Great Reunion July 2004

Email to high school classmates after our 25^th Reunion

To: wheatley79 <wheatley79@yahoogroups.com>

Sent: Mon Jul 05 2004 Thanks for the Great Reunion

Wheatley Classmates,

I'm back in Seattle and sitting looking out my kitchen window at Mt. Rainier... a vantage point I take for granted after ten years of living on the west coast. It stands strong and vivid against the blue sky towering over the city of Seattle. My trip east was a 72-hour whirlwind, and it was worthwhile.

It is rare in life that you get to walk down the paths of youth in one night with so many familiar faces and former friends. I sat on the fence about returning to our 25th reunion almost to the end. It was well worth the journey.

How wonderful to reacquaint myself with so many former classmates... some of whom spent 13 years together through Northside, Willets and Wheatley's classrooms, playgrounds and backyards.

For those not able to attend, you were remembered well and you each were missed.

For those who worked so hard at making sure the event happened, Tracy, David, Amy, Scott, Cindy, Gwendolyn and anyone else who I am missing acknowledging or don't know pitched in, thank you.

Three cheers for a job well done.

For others who served as yahoo group cheerleaders, leading us to our PCs each morning to see what next from "Wheatley 79" before we all came together:  Audrey, Christina, Gnat, Coach, Janeann, Ricky... thanks for starting up the memories.

There were several times on Saturday night, when I looked across the room and forgot that 25 years had passed, that we've each grown, changed, lived through personal triumphs and tragedy, joys and heartaches...some lucky to have the support of childhood friends with them along the way, others striking out and held up by new loves and friends.  But as I looked around at each of you, I knew why in the end I returned for the first time in 15 years to Long Island. You were at my childhood birthday parties, we walked to school together, rode the bus, attended cub scouts, religious classes, and our first boy/girl parties together. I went to your bar/bas mitzvahs, sweet sixteen parties, we learned to drive together, ate lunch together, studied together, dissected frogs together, learned about the birds and the bees together (and practiced) and all in all grew up together. Good or bad, each of you in your own ways shaped me in some way, into who I am today... and for that, I honor each of you.

So, I start back into my world here in Seattle and look forward. I hope to be better about staying in touch... perhaps I will, perhaps I won't...perhaps we'll keep the Yahoo site active to visit with one another as the time moves on. Each of us is likely thinking the same. Regardless, I'll hold a new memory tied to my childhood, distinct and unique, another chapter, about a hot July night together, some memories corrected, others renewed and more still refreshed.

I wish only good things for each of you and your families; I invite any of you to contact me in Seattle, on your next visit to the Pacific Northwest, or your first. Like Mt. Rainier out my kitchen window, that I take often for granted... solid and strong, I often discount my years of growing up in East Williston and that you each play some role in. We share a solid and strong childhood foundation, that our parents, our teachers and our communities committed to providing for us, I am grateful for them as well.

So I thank you for the fun, the pain, the thrill and the torment of growing up together and what we shared... and I thank you for the fun and joy of being together for one night...the many efforts made to be together, and a very special thank you for the spouses and significant others who selflessly supported that effort on a holiday weekend.

Getting to a reunion doesn't start with a plane ride, or a drive across a few local towns, the path there was one common and unique to each of us and which started 25 years ago...we'll now wrap our memories up and take them with us on our own journeys... but getting there for each of us was about honoring from where we all came, where we all hope yet to go and for a brief moment one another.

As the road unravels before you all....

All the best...

John McDowell