Back in April, we shared the announcement of a reunion for the Gatewood Elementary School Class of 1956. Now, the followup – Carol Stoner shares the photo above and this report on how it went!

We finally managed to locate more than 70 of the original list of 90. Most of us had not seen the school since the remodel in 1991, and we spent much of the tour reconciling our memories with the new reality.

The Class of 1956 attended Gatewood before the ‘gator was its mascot, when wooden desks with iron grillwork legs were bolted to the floor, and empty inkwells clanged if you flicked them during study time. Cloakrooms in the back were filled with wet coats, dripping boots, and lunchboxes with baloney sandwiches on white bread. No actual library; books were shelved in Mr. Acedo’s sixth-grade classroom, and choosing 35 books for your class was brief, stressful, and done very quietly during his class if you were book monitor that month. And, even in 1956, the wooden stairs leading up into the school had deep indentations, hollow treads, where former students, perhaps parents and grandparents, had trudged in previous decades.

On August 22nd, twenty-eight ‘Woodies reunited for a tour of the remodeled school and a catchup picnic in Lincoln Park. They found the wooden steps had been replaced, but delighted in the fact that the century-old banisters had been retained. Gone also were the wooden desks and cloakrooms, giving the rooms a modern feel and more space. The class picture on the front steps and the tour itself was much like herding cats, but a good time was had by all.

The picnic following at Lincoln Park, catered by Husky’s, was great fun. We heard apologies for remembered slights: “I’m sorry I pushed you off the table in Kindergarten, but I wanted to nap there” or “Sorry I teased you so much, but you were so cute when you blushed.” Episodes were told about teachers who had impacted our lives for good and bad, but we heard no bad stories about missing classmates, only “Remember how fast he ran?” or “She was so funny! Do you remember when she…?” We also told stories on ourselves, and it turns out that little candy store across the street from school must have made a fortune!

Although most of us shared the grade-school experience with one class for seven years, we split into two groups in ’56, some going to Madison and some to Denny. Some classmates we hadn’t seen in 58 years. Since then our classmates have built homes, airplanes, businesses, and families. They have climbed mountains, written books, worked in law enforcement, education, and health care. They have been firefighters, commercial fishermen, and researchers. They’ve worked with numbers, words, machinery, and people. It was a joy to reconnect with old friends, to remember cloakrooms, wooden desks, and inkwells, and when we were all twelve.

Gatewood is an official city landmark, by the way. P.S. Follow the link to the April announcement to see class photos from back in the day.