I attended the reunion and really cherish my memories of it. My only regret is that the time passed so quickly, and I didn’t have an opportunity to spend quality time with everyone I wanted to.

Our Class of ’61 reunion team did a fantastic job of engineering a wonderful reunion experience. I took some photos and have added them to galleries of the various activities. Also, if any of you have pictures, I would like to add them to the site.

Our tour of the school brought back many memories. The campus is quite a bit larger now, but all of the old buildings are still there. I was shocked to discover that we had all carved our signatures in wet concrete just outside the cafeteria. A few were gone because of the addition of a small ramp, but many of our imprints were still there… fifty years later.

About thirty or forty of us ate dinner Friday night at the Steer ‘N Stein. It was fun. An Antelope Valley Press reporter was there. The football team was supposed to be there, but they had left shortly before we arrived. Nevertheless, we enjoyed each other’s company over dinner.

Some classmates atttended the game, but my wife, Lynda, and I didn’t, so there isn’t much I can say about it except that Palmdale beat Lancaster. Huzzah!

We enjoy wildlife and birds, so on Saturday, we really apprreciated Jim and Paulette’s tour of the Prime Desert Woodland Preserve. (We even returned on Sunday.) It’s funny how you change over your lifetime. When I was a student at PHS, I pretty much ignored the interesting wildlife of Antelope Valley. What a shame.

The musical road in Lancaster was an interesting diversion. We drove over it several times, listening to the road’s renditon of the beginning of the William Tell Overture. Not on a par with a symphony orchestra, but bizarrely interesting.

We also visited the Blackbird Air Park. Looking at the Blackbirds, the U-2, and an F-104, reminded me that Palmdale and Lancaster were at the epicenter of aeronautical technology when we were all seniors. The fastest figher in the world was being tested and perfected there. (My next door neighbor, Whitey Van Salter, gave his life as an F-104 test pilot.) The highest-flying plane in the world was stationed there. The most secret and fastest plane, the Blackbird SR71, was soon to be flown there. Quiet little Palmdale was actually a happening place!

In the evening, we attended the much anticipated reunion celebration at the University of Antelope Valley Grand Ballroom. To me, even though I didn’t interact as much as I could have—or should have, I truly enjoyed seeing the faces of people I remember from those days. The reunion featured very good food, music from the good old days, and, most important, great conversation with old friends. Myron Rosenberg even brought a scrapbook that rekindled grand old memories.

Let’s do it again. Soon, while most of us are still able.