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Homewood is a suburb of Chicago, Illinois where I grew up and went to high school with around 1,000 people in our class of 1975 at Homewood-Flossmoor (HF) High School.  I was invited back in mid-April to go to a regional “mini-reunion” for those HF graduates from our class who happen to live in the Southern California area. The reunion was suggested by one of my classmates, Scott Tomlinson, who was taking advantage of a business trip to San Diego to do an all-points call for a get together. He made it along with Marty Leonard and Richard Carroll.  At that reunion, I  got to meet Scott’s son Erik who is stationed there as a Marine.

We had such a good time that Scott suggested that we do it again in August. Well, this time Marty couldn’t make it, but Mike Bentivenga said he would be able to join us this time. We met at a restaurant called Wind & Sea that is literally right at the edge of the harbor at Dana Point.  Traffic was the usual weekend crawl down on the I-5.  I was impatient to get there, not just because I was excited to see everybody again, but because of my half-German, half-Irish background, I’m one of those guys who likes to make it to a pub or to a party on time.

I pulled in half an hour late, and Mike about half an hour after that. But after enduring an hour and a half of highway hell, we spent the next three hours in reminiscing heaven. Mike was the same outgoing guy I remembered from way back when, and I remarked to myself that our outside appearance had changed, but the spark of personality behind each of those slightly older faces seemed ageless, like we were talking about events from last week rather than from 35 years ago or more. That was the same thing I experienced last time when I saw Scott, Marty and Rich 4 months ago. (You can read the account of that reunion in my previous post https://4squareviews.com/2012/04/22/translucent/.)

I thought it was interesting that the experiences we’ve had since high school have been diverse, but our individual waves of successes and setbacks have been hit by the same tidal waves of major events: the dot-com bust, 9/11, the 2008 financial meltdown, and now the changing climate. But I think we must be a pretty resilient bunch, because I’m still basically optimistic despite the overall economic situation our country is in right now.

At this reunion, it was not Scott, but Rich who introduced his son Austin to the rest of us. He’s an avid scouter, and I was afraid that our tales of wild exploits from our high school days would give him some wild ideas. “We’re just telling you these stories to let you know what not to do when you get to be our age,” I tried to tell him, albeit unconvincingly. Scott, Mike and I all recounted the first time we got ill from too much alcohol, and found that we all had the experience of not being able to drink that particular type of alcohol with enjoyment when we grew up because “our bodies still remembered,” as Scott put it.

Another interesting parallel I found was that Mike related that since he is quite an extroverted, A-type personality, he has had to develop a “laid back” persona in order to be able to communicate with people better (especially out here in California) for those who find his regular “switched-on” self a little too intimidating. I realized that I had been doing the reverse. I felt in high school that I was introverted and not leadership material because I was a little too laid back and not forward enough with people. So through my leadership training at Toastmasters, I’ve gone from being a regular member to the Assistant Area governor in a year and a half. I’ve had to develop an “extroverted” persona for the same reason that Mike developed his persona—to be able to communicate with people better. It was interesting to see the parallel between Mike’s case and mine.

Overall, I have to say that having been to the reunion back in April had quite a salutary effect on me. There is something that Carl Jung referred to as the “shadow”, or the embodiment of energies that one has denied in life for one reason or the other. These can be positive or negative energies depending on the reason for the denial. When I looked back at my life after our reunion in April, I realized there were a lot of things I enjoyed doing back in high school that I don’t do any more, like being part of a chorus. I realized that was a whole dimension of my talents and experience that I had left buried after I left college. I bought some CDs of various Broadway hits and started singing along to them. In May, I was approached by someone at a networking event who asked me if I sang, and I said, “well, I used to.” He invited me to a men’s chorus called the Masters of Harmony, and I decided to visit one of their rehearsals. Man, I was hooked! They sounded great, and it reminded me so much of the rehearsals that Walter Rodby, our choral director at HF High School, used to put us through. I went for about a month, and did the preliminary audition in June—and passed with flying colors.

This coming Wednesday I have the second audition (out of a total of four) for which I’ve been practicing about two months, and I hope I pass it as well. I realized on Saturday night that I never would have had the guts to go after this kind of experience if I hadn’t been shocked into “reclaiming territory” of the past inside of my head because of the first reunion.

Well, it was a wonderful three hours, but Scott had to get back because he wanted to have a chance to see his son in San Diego one more time before he was to fly out the next day back to Houston. I asked him about what motivated Erik to join the Marines and he mentioned there was a straight line from 9/11 which happened when he was in 5^th grade to his decision later on in life to be a Marine.

On driving home along the Pacific Coast Highway back home after our reunion, I thought of that decision and I suddenly realized that I would do a speech on 9/11 about my experience on that date, and how it has shaped my later life. It was sparked by my hearing the tune “Try to Remember”, connecting it with 9/11 because of the lyrics “Try to remember the kind of September, When life was slow and oh, so mellow”, and then connecting that with Scott’s story about his son.   I’m always so full of energy and ideas after I meet with my classmates!

I’m very glad I went to the second reunion.  I not only reunited with three great guys from the past, but I also reunited with my bolder self from long ago that is now renewing my present life with more and more energy.   I hope to meet more and more of my fellow classmates in the months and years ahead.

Thanks again, Scott—you don’t know what you’ve started!

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