Email 1 - 11/11/2014
Dear NHS57 Classmates:
As we enter the fourth quarter-century of our lives, most of us are no longer working and are hopefully enjoying our friends and families. But with time we will each face some sort of denouement that will end our joys and sorrows in this life. MEANWHILE, shouldn’t those of us that are still able, continue to meet periodically to share our stories, to reminiscence and simply to greet once again those with whom we shared our early lives.
OK, so we’ve had some nice reunions over the years, culminating with our 50th and 55th. All these reunions were planned by the Norview Ladies Alumni Association (NLAA). We thank this group of about a dozen classmates for their hard work, but now they say enough is enough, they are retiring.
Yet there remains a desire among some of us to meet periodically, probably in a low-key way. So at our 55th reunion, I volunteered to try to organize something, for which this message is the beginning.
June of 2017 will mark 60 years since we left Norview. I know its over 2 years away, but it will help to find out the extent of interest and to gather some idea of what kind of event is wanted.
The most common suggestion is that we have a leisurely luncheon—season, day of week and exactly where to be decided later. That’s not much compared to reunions of the past, but I suspect we’re getting beyond wanting very much of an event. The main attraction is that, hopefully, a significant number of classmates will want to attend. Subgroups and individuals could plan additional events, meetings, etc. before and after the luncheon, which I’d be happy to try to facilitate.
For those who travel from afar, we might be able to arrange a discounted price at a local hotel for the nights before and after.
Let me know if you have other ideas for our reunion.
Now to some preliminaries.
After our 50th reunion, I started a website for our class. It’s at https://sites.google.com/site/nhs1957/ . In the left side column you will find 2 pages of immediate interest. The first, “Class List,” is a list of all our classmates, 340 in number. It indicates those for whom I have an email address (originally put together by NLAA. I am able to communicate with only these 75. If you know the email address of others, please send it to me. My self-imposed job description will not allow me to communicate with classmates by regular mail or phone, so you will need to do this for me (thank you) for those with whom you are in contact.
The second page is “Deceased,” only 68 known (this list also originally from NLAA). As the attachment to this message explains, there are probably about 90 additional deceased I don’t know about. So I have 2 more requests: 1) if you let me know about any additional deceased, I will add them to the online list; 2) notice that the names of some of the deceased have embedded links to an obituary or other material, so if you know of an obituary or relevant material for any of our deceased classmates, share it with me and I will add it to the deceased list. In this way the list becomes a low-key memorial to our deceased classmates.
Most obituaries appear in a local newspaper. Email me the link if you know it. Or you can scan (at a Kinko’s or most photo shops) a hardcopy and email me that. Or you can send me the hardcopy itself by regular mail. With the hardcopy, be sure to include or let me know the source, e.g., name of newspaper and date.
Jym Clendenin
[Addresses removed from this posting]
Attachment:
23 September 2014
Survivors
There were about 340 in the NHS class of 1957 (approximately 300 graduated), presumably about half male, half female.
Life expectancy at age 18 today[1]: male – 77 years; female – 81 years.
Assume life expectancy at age 18 in 1957 was maybe 1 year less than today, so about 50% of male and maybe 60% of female classmates should still be alive.
Deceased list on NHS 1957 website[2] has only 68 names (20% of 340): 40 males, 28 females. There are probably about 90 or so more—who are they?
Additional stastistics from ref. [1]:
Life expectancy at age 75 today: male – 86 years; female 88 years.
Enjoy life while you can!
[1] Social Security Actuarial Tables (http://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html)
[2] https://sites.google.com/site/nhs1957/home/deceased