... please email mhsclassof72@gmail.com!
Today, here's why Dawn Thompson Olney is coming to the reunion:
“A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” The Adventures of Huck Finn,” “Little Women” — everyone loves a good coming-of-age story. But to me, the best coming-of-age story is the one at Manhattan High School in the early 1970s, where we are in one another's stories. We were together every day of the week for six of the most formative years of our lives. Many of us even stretch back to grade school. Through countless classroom discussions, lunches, field trips, science projects, and extracurricular activities, friendships developed. We figured things out. We grew up together and continue to influence each other to this day in ways we don’t even realize.
When I go to reunions and I visit with former classmates, I am always struck when I realize how familiar they are to me — even if I only see them at reunions. I see mannerisms, their posture, their laugh or voice, their sense of humor, and they are familiar. I know them. And more fun memories come flooding back.
The musical, the smoking lounge, football games, pep rallies, homecoming chili feed and bonfire, debate, choir, The Mentor, sock hops, assemblies … and then there are other memories that are not so great, like the showers in the girl’s locker room, the negative score on my senior English term paper, or boys tossing pennies at girls outside the cafeteria.
It’s all our stories together. I hope you will join me in May to remember and celebrate the time we came of age, and catch up on the lives we are living now.
Dawn and Brad Olney, Class of '72
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