Shawnee Mission, Hail to Thee

10: Visit to the ol’ hometown for my high school grad class 50-year reunion
By Brian R. Wright

[Link to Episode 9]

Note: These columns are a series I am making into a volume of my memoirs, working title: Volume 1: Overland Park Ways. You may follow the links at top and bottom of page to go to preceding or succeeding episodes. The series starts here. {If the [Link to Episode <next>] at the  bottom of the column does not show an active hyperlink, then the <next> column has yet to be written.}

Hometown: Overland Park, Kansas
High School: Shawnee Mission West… Vikings
Event: Cocktails w/serious hors d’oeuvres
Location: Mission Hills Country Club, Mission, KS
Date and Time: Friday, October 13, 2017, 5-9+

Followed by a Saturday the 14th tour of the school—Hi, Eric with the brass, um, horns!—, brunch at a nearby sports bistro (Maloney’s), and, for a handful of the historically motivated, a reunion coda at the Johnson County Historical Museum. So that about wraps it up. I decided that the 50th reunion weekend belongs in the memoirs as a flash forward, since so much of what transpired was of high reminiscence value. In the form of a travelog…

[It occurs to me herein I’m mixing past and present tenses indiscriminately. Sorry for that.]

Remote Contact

Throughout the summer I had thought, hey, this is a big year, my 50th anniversary of crossing that all-American threshold of receiving a high school diploma. I felt it would be nice to make the effort this time—perhaps the realistic last best chance to dip into the teenage nostalgia pool without being laughed at as a beyond-the-pale geezer. It was getting to be late July and I thought by this late date, any reunions would have surely been imminent or behind me.  Continue reading