Reflections on My Class of 1980 Reunion Experience

I left you hanging there, in the middle of my reunion trip with teasers about the future. And then I disappeared for a week. My explanation, I was told at Deerfield that one only has explanations and not excuses, is that it was amazing and that after 3 nights at home my sleep debt is down to 12 hours according to Rise Sleep phone app which integrates a bunch of data from my watch and phone. It was a heck of a week. It was stellar. It was better, and harder, than I could have imagined.

Saturday was the big reunion day. We got a late start and caught the tail end of breakfast. Saw a couple of members of the class of 1980 and said our hellos. Everybody is pretty chill about the wheelchair and my disabilities. It is nice to just be me, even a bent and broken me.

We missed the session on John Austin’s A Framework for Schools, but attended his state of the school speech. He was excellent, emphasizing commitment to history and tradition while embracing considered change. The school will be the only school to continue the tradition of sit-down meals (in the new Dining Hall to be completed in January). He cited the main virtue of them as being the awkwardness of being sent to a new random, or not so random, group of students and a faculty member every few weeks. Forced to interact with people you did not know, or did not like, instead of your regular meal buddies. He talked about the impact of the internet and social media and Deerfield’s “phone stays in the dorm” during the academic day rule. He quietly did not mention he was head of the task force that created A Framework for Schools while discussing it.

Dr. Austin also covered John McPhee’s The Headmaster, which he reads every year, about the Frank Boyden, headmaster of Deerfield from 1902 to 1968. He was the man behind Deerfield’s rise to greatness from its origins. When he started, Deerfield had fewer than 30 students, mostly local. When he left it was a prestigious all-male academy of over 400. Austin used his mention of The Headmaster to thank my class for a fund we have created to give copes of the book to all faculty and students in perpetuity. John Mattes is talking to him about how to integrate the book into the curriculum and school life. We printed a special run of 5000 copies the book with “A Gift from the Class of 1980” imprinted on the back cover in gold and are building a fund for future reprints. We may have a bit of an ego.

Lunch was truck food from the same trucks the students could get food from. I wish we had that when I was there instead of McDonald’s by taxi or “the Greasy Greek” pizza. I had some sliders and pulled pork.

In the afternoon we had the class meeting, and my classmates kindly granted me some time to speak. We have audio or video and here is my rough text, before ad lib changes. It is hard for me to express how well that went. It exceeded my expectations. It exceeded my hopes. It exceeded my dreams. I never imagined it could go so well. I had so many conversations about stroke, cancer, grief, and every-day-run-of-the-mill-life-sucks-sometimes survivorship. Thank you class of 1980 for the opportunity to speak and for giving so much back. You guys are the best — there is good reason for all that ego.

Sunday, it was time to shift gears and head to Burlington, VT. We got a late start and missed church at the First Church of Deerfield. I have wanted to go for ages because this church we used to just call the Old Brick Church is part of the Unitarian Universalist Association and the United Church of Christ. My church is UUA and I love to visit fellow UUs when I can to see the variety of traditions and cultures within this church without a creed. I am a UU Buddhist. I suspect most or all of the members her are UU Christians. As I’ve said before “Maybe next reunion.”

Before we left on the trip, I was whining about a concert here in Austin I woud not be able to attend. Spencer randomly mentioned California Guitar Trio, who I have not seen in years so I looked up their Austin schedule. They have not been here since 2023 and have no gig scheduled. Meanwhile, Spencer looked up their current schedule which had a concert June 8 at the Higher Ground in Burlington, VT. Or four and a half if you do what we did and intentionally take the scenic route up the middle of Vermont. We arrived in time for Indian dinner across the parking lot from the show and enjoyed a wonderful show. They recorded the show live and made copies backstage so I have it forever and can share with Rachel.

California Guitar Trio at the Higher Ground. June 8, 2024.

Monday was a day for which I have been waiting. After a long drive down to Cape Cod, I got to see Dave and Sig Howell, Dave was a science teacher at Deerfield, the director of the planetarium where I was Technical director with Bob Tyler, and corridor master of my hall junior year. Sig is his wife. When I went to Deerfield she was a public school teacher; she later worked admissions at the academy. Understanding “corridor master” for those who did not attend boarding school is hard. It is some mix of parent, prison guard, friend, and mentor. My junior year at Deerfield, I had challenges. I was learning leadership via my work with the computer system (you young ines may have trouble understanding we had one computer for all 550 students) and planetarium (which I won’t even try to explain). I had a girlfriend back home; my parents suddenly pulled the plug and moved from Pennsylvania to Illinois, killing that relationship with no notice, I was starting to worry about college. The Howells took on helping me through this while my parents were 250 to 900 miles away. And Sig didn’t even get paid by the academy. Four hours went by with ease, talking about the academy, the Red Sox, Spencer’s work, my possible work, books, students at Deerfield (lots of discipline-related stories), strokes (Dave and I are both stroke survivors), and whatever. It was wonderful.