My bride, Susan, and I just attended two separate high school reunions in the last few weeks and I’m getting ready for a third one in about twelve days – and all of the reunions are ours!

Wait, people only graduate from one high school, what’s up? You’re correct. Here’s the simple solution - They are Susan’s reunion, Dennis’s reunion and … Dennis’s other reunion (I’ll get to that in a bit.)

Though we didn’t meet until college, Susan and I both graduated 50 years ago from neighboring high schools in SoCal. The year was 1974 and we NEVER thought of where we’d be in the year 2024 – 50 years later. Definitely didn’t picture ourselves driving in the desert, getting ready to see classmates, many of whom we’d not been in contact with for decades, ha!

Yet, a special curiosity drove us on. Here we were, during this incredibly hot summer of 2024, driving down to SoCal, air conditioner blasting in the desert heat of Idaho, Utah, Arizona and California. Heat didn’t stop us, nothing did, we arrived safe and sound.

Susan’s reunion was up first. Mine was on deck a few weeks later. We wondered what it would be like to see the friends we knew **in high school, that is…only in high school. You see, Susan attended elementary and junior high schools in a different SoCal city; for me, my schools were in a different state: Michigan.

The 9-12th grade California friendships were good, yet they stood alone, without us really knowing our friend’s pasts, their siblings nor their parents. We had no little kid school-yard experiences in common. We didn’t really deeply know them. We just all went to high school – and stood or fell on our own merits once we got there. (Looking back on those times, it was as if we were all pretend-adults trying to do the best we could prior to graduating.)

That was then. Now it’s been 50 years, many of us were returning…but for what? Could it be a completion of some type? A curiosity?

Prior to walking into our reunions, neither Susan nor I gave a second thought to that unique perspective of only spending four short years with these peers; but MAN did it hit us!

Here’s what we discovered as a result of attending our two reunions:

1. High school friends were necessary; they were “coves of rest” protecting us in those days amid the horrible sea-waves of parental infidelity, divorce and family destruction.
2. Susan and I became two very active students who learned to leave our chaotic homes and spend lots of time involved at school club and activities.
3. Cliques in high school usually came about because so many students very naturally enjoyed elementary and junior high schools together. Those shared childhood experiences bonded them and left others lonely and alone; those who had not attended the earlier schools. That is, unless the newbies made decisions to “get involved”!

So, here you go… Susan and I walked away from these two terrifically fun reunions with some amazing personal observations about how overcoming the hardships of life at home almost always have their roots in how we acted or reacted to the hardships at school.

Before I do that, take a listen to Bon Jovi’s song Reunion.

He was asked to speak at a graduation and wrote this song for them to remember at their 10-year reunion. Pay particular attention to his lyrics that say the following:

High school friends were necessary

When Susan and her siblings got “wound around the axle” of their parents’ divorce, it meant selling their lovely home with a pool in upscale Glendora, CA, losing their childhood friends and moving into a ramshackle little house on a busy street in Covina – a home that a single mother could afford on one income.

Just as so many of you experienced through your parents’s divorces (or other hard-ships), she was scattered to the wind to choose an individual direction to pursue, rather than a tight-knit family’s direction. Susan chose drama, songleading, girl’s athletic events and many other activities. Throughout all of this, friends and teachers helped her grow and become a confident student, actress and songleader. She was selected to become Homecoming Queen and made many friends. High school friends were indeed necessary, for this season.

I left my high school in Michigan mid-way through 10th grade, and arrived in SoCal. I entered into basketball, track, drama, chorus and in two months. With the incredibly kind care of my new classmates, Rene’ Maddox and a few others, I ran for and won class president for the upcoming 11th grade year. Such a jump-start directed the rest of my life. Again, High school friends were indeed necessary.

Who helped you? How did they specifically help the teenage version of you? I’d love to hear back from you.

We learned to leave our chaotic homes

We learned how to bifurcate our lives by staying busy at school activities. While our home life was chaotic, school was organized, manageable and gave us self-respect. We watched others, teachers, coaches and drama teachers and learned that chaos did NOT have to follow us into the high school quads and classrooms. We both learned to grow into the people we wanted to become.

For example, I learned how to manage time. I remember being on the Varsity track team, while I was the lead in a school musical. Practice for track got in the way of practice for the play. I had to solve the calendar collision and asked the coach to allow me to work out AFTER the play practice was over. Well, this also meant that it was AFTER the track and field athletes were finished. I practiced by myself; the coach saw my initiative and approved. It also meant that I didn’t have to return till later to my house of anger, frustration and parental flare ups. What I DID do was to focus on my younger siblings and take them out for walks, drives, ice cream, movies and time together. Though my parents divorced, my siblings and I stayed together. We remain close today.

What was your home like? What blessings and what curses did you receive inside the walls of your family’s home? I’d like to hear.

Cliques and newbies can exist in the same universe

At both of our reunions Susan and I loved hearing the stories of our classmates as they spoke about their time together in elementary school and junior high school. As we listened in, the realization hit us of how different our high school years were from theirs. They knew one another as little kiddos. We parachuted into their midst as teens. They knew the classmate’s siblings - we had no idea who their parents were. These kids were on swim team together, Little League and Cub Scouts and Brownies – no one even knew what we looked like in fifth grade.

And it was alright.

The cliques that were naturally a part of high school evaporated for us at the two reunions. Their precious stories of families and elementary schools and junior high dances all combined to make me look at faces of 68-year-old classmates and smile. These precious friends and acquaintances of long ago were sharing the preciousness of their lives with Susan and me… and us with them. The whole group of us were all newbies, together again.

Susan’s classmate, Joe Pena, asked her about her family and the number of sisters and brothers she had. Joe’s wife, Vivian Webb, was my classmate, and asked me about our common faith as Christians. We four sat talking at Susan’s reunion and a couple of weeks later picked up the conversation once again at Vivian’s and my reunion.

If you’ve toyed with not attending your high school (or college) reunions, has this newsletter helped you decide? What are you thinking as each August unveils itself and another school year begins?

So, what to do?

First, take a fierce inventory of the necessary friends you had in high school. Ask yourself how they helped you. Think about the teen version of yourself from those years – ask yourself what worked by developing those friends. Take time to just remember and reach out to your high school (or college) and find out when the next reunion might be for you to attend. Take someone with you – but be prepared – you may have to attend their reunion, too!! Ha.

Next, think back to the craziness of your home when you were in high school. Smell the smells, hear the sounds in your memory. Taste the tastes. Find the good in those years and intentionally smile. As bad as it was for many people, it wasn’t terrible all the time. Grab those moments. Embrace them. Grow from them.

Finally, realize that even the most painful cliques in high school weren’t really real. They were made of the 5th grade versions of themselves laughing and enjoying 5th grade versions of other kids they knew in elementary school. They were Little Leaguers remembering the summer championships they shared with neighbor kids. They were the Brownies and Girl Scouts who loved the different scouting things they did together. And be happy for them, as they had the wonderful opportunity of growing up together – even into high school, when you and Susan and I appeared as almost-adults and seemed to crash their party. They weren’t really mean, just being kids I suppose. And we had no intention of crashing anybody’s party.

It might be just the kind of realization that we all need as we grow older.

Oh, and by the way, the third high school reunion that I mentioned? Well, in just a little bit, I will be attending the Michigan event by myself at Mt. Clemens High School. Susan blessed me with the chance to go see the kids I attended 5th grade through 10th grade in the 1960’s and early ‘70’s. I just might write the next newsletter on what I learned from time with Mike and Byron, Chris and Karin, and whoever else the 5th grade version of Dennis Mansfield will have the honor of re-meeting through the younger side of reunions.

To requote Bon Jovi:

I found love and trust with Susan a long time ago.

The three reunions remind Susan and me of what matters most today.

More later,

Den

Den’s Latest and Greatest

• If the suggestion of attending a reunion is interesting to you BUT you’ve got a few years before your next high school or college one, consider initiating your own Family Reunion! Each year, my family of two adult children, their spouses and a total of 5 grand-kiddos get together with Susan and me at a Christian family camp on Catalina Island called Campus By the Sea (CampusByTheSea.org). This summer was just as fun as the other family times together.

• Reach out to your high school (or college) admin office and ask about the dates of your class’s upcoming reunion. It is VERY common for education admin folks to have the contact information WAY ahead of time.
• If you can, please send me your high school graduation pic! Here are Susan’s and mine, attached to the name badges we wore at our two reunions. I’ll add a third one, if one of my Mt. Clemens High School classmates makes me one for my THIRD reunion!