10/28/2025
Shared by permission of Craig Newcomb, author.
I really enjoyed our White River Class of 1975, 50th reunion. There were a lot of great responses from everyone sharing how a great time it was. It took me a bit too long to add my comments. Hope to hear from everyone, and is there a site for our photo's?
White River Reunion
This was the summer of reunions. We started with a family gathering on my wife’s father’s side — the three surviving brothers together again for the first time in decades. Cousins, old friends, and plenty of “mostly true” stories filled the air. It was laughter and memory and exaggeration all tangled up in one long weekend.
Then came my White River High School 50th reunion. I’d made it to the 10-year, maybe the 20th, but after that life happened — kids, work, sports, chaos — and reunions slipped off the calendar.
When a friend heard I was going to the 50th, he said, “Going back to relive the glory days?” Maybe a little, I admitted. But that wasn’t it. It wasn’t about nostalgia so much as connection — touching base, renewing friendships, and seeing what kind of adults those teenage versions of us had become. Sure, we told high school stories — some factual, some embellished, all filtered through selective memory — but they were rooted in the shared soil of our youth.
Over the years, I’ve made plenty of friends — co-workers, teammates, other parents — wonderful people all. But there’s something special about the friends you grew up with. They remember you before the career, before the mortgage, before the gray hair. You can have opposite beliefs and still laugh together, because you remember where you both came from.
That day, enjoying a beautiful blue sky August afternoon, I couldn’t tell who’d made money, who hadn’t, who’d succeeded or stumbled, who was famous or infamous. Everyone was simply a classmate. We were all friends. It was a breath of fresh air and an escape from the tension our nation and society are experiencing. For that day, it felt whole again.
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Stories That Stuck
We traded tales that day. Pat, the logger, still proud of his hard life even as it wore on him. He and Bob argued over who’d been the fastest sprinter back in the day — neither willing to concede after half a century.
Brad told stories that had us in stitches — times we got away with things, and times we absolutely didn’t. Our kids would freak out with the tales of which teacher had the largest paddle and how far they could send us with a hack, or breaking a paddle on your butt, or missing your rear and leaving indentations in your thigh.
We were the first class to go through that open-concept middle school — one big room divided by flimsy folding panels. What genius thought that was a good idea? I still remember Mr. Box’s mechanical drawing class: a disaster zone of flying triangles and sticky notes on fuzzy sweaters. He’d built a beautiful rack for the T-squares, and we “accidently” broke it so many times he finally gave up repairing it. Then when Mr. Baker, the principle came into our room and found the nasty notes we had stuck to our teachers sweater. The principle was going to prove that Mt. Baker is still an active volcano, and it was erupting in our room.
Someone brought up Gopher — no one knew if he was still around, or in jail, or possibly running for office somewhere.
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The Election Nobody Saw Coming
One of the funniest moments of the reunion came when the women revealed that they knew what we guys had done our senior year. We’d always thought we’d gotten away with it.
Back then, the girls in our class were smart, confident, and ran everything — clubs, committees, most of our class leadership since I can remember. By spring of our junior year, we boys decided it was time for a little rebellion. Someone suggested voting for Bob as class president. Bob was the perfect choice: friendly, athletic, the kind of guy who got along with everyone. Every guy in class backed him, and a few girls joined in, so he won.
And wouldn’t you know it — he turned out to be a great leader. Fifty years later, Bob hosted the reunion at his place, pulling everyone together again just like before. The circle had come full.
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What We Didn’t Know Back Then
It’s funny — you think you know people, but most of the time, you only know a sliver of their lives. Listening to my classmates share their stories was humbling.
I remembered my own home life — a chain-smoking stepfather, and a locker mate who smoked pot. I never thought much about it at the time, but now I wonder if I walked around smelling like a human ashtray. My classmates laughed and said probably not — most of us came from smoker households anyway. Back then, smoking was everywhere. Cars had ashtrays, every seat on planes had ash trays, and being “cool” often meant a cigarette dangling from your lips. For my class mates that smoked, and those that still do, you’re still cool, we’re all a product of our upbringing and how we adjust to life.
I thought I’d grown up poor — not destitute, but we counted every dime. My shoes weren’t Converse; they were the J.C. Penney knockoffs. My jeans weren’t Levi’s; they were Sears and Roebuck specials. My mother worked herself to the bone so I could play sports.
The summer before my senior year, while I was off picking pineapples in Hawaii, she bought 350 stewing hens from a farmer. She butchered, plucked, and bagged them — all to raise enough money for my football cleats, wrestling shoes, track spikes, and sports fees. I didn’t know any of this until I came home. At the airport, I popped open the trunk of our old ’66 Ford Fairlane and was hit by the unmistakable scent of sacrifice — 350 slaughtered chickens.
Mom had driven to the White River, gutted the birds on the riverbank, then soaked and plucked them in our only bathtub. It took years to understand what kind of love that was — and even longer to realize how little I’d thanked her.
At the reunion, I discovered I wasn’t alone. Some classmates had grown up in tougher homes than mine. We all carried quiet stories of struggle — and survival.
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Falling Forward
There wasn’t enough time to hear everyone’s stories. I tried to listen more than I talked — remembering that old saying, you’ve got two ears and one mouth, so use them in that proportion. Still, the hours vanished. Every conversation ended too soon.
Judy was right, even though I’ve only shared Facebook messages her and Jeff, when we met the stories flew. Sharing our experiences made it seem like I’ve known Jeff all my life. We had to excuse ourselves to talk to others. I left wishing I’d spoken to more people — hoping I hadn’t missed someone who wanted to share their piece of the journey.
That’s what reunions remind you: life is just a collection of shared stories. The high points and the hard falls, the laughter and loss — they all matter. Sometimes we soar. Sometimes we stumble. The trick is to fall forward, to keep moving toward the next adventure, learning from the past but not living in it.
So, here’s my hope to the White River Class of ’75:
Let’s not wait another ten years to share our stories again.
Go forward. Be kind. Be curious. Be the person in the world that makes people happy you’re around.
And keep falling forward.
