73 people, including 59 graduates and 14 guests, attended the Worth County Alumni Reunion Sunday. The Classes of 1970 and 1971 were honored, since there was no reunion last year. Three members of the Class of 1948 attended. They were Evelyn Groom (Valedictorian), Joan Ruckman (Salutatorian), and Jack Cottrell.
Two families had the most graduates; the Combs (4) and the Hardy families (4) had the most members present. The Roach, Fletchall, and Cottrell families each had three members present. The person who came from the greatest distance away was Richard Hensley, who spoke at the event; he came from Wilmington (DE). The Class of 1971 had the most members present with 17; the Class of 1970 had six members, with 17 attending a class reunion the day before. Three couples from the Class of 1971 celebrated their 50th anniversary this year. The Alumni Association collected $790 in donations from the plate this year.
Richard Hensley of the Class of 1971 was the first speaker. He played some tuba pieces, including “When Yuba plays the Rumba on the Tuba down in Cuba,” “Fere Jacques,” “The Tuba Man,” and “Tubby the Tuba.” He played in Carnegie Hall two months after the 9/11 attacks and played, “An American in Paris.”
In 1976, Hensley joined the military and got into the US Army Band in Staten Island. People always had free tickets for service members; as a result, he and a friend were able to go to Yankee Stadium during the 1977 World Series and watch the game where Reggie Jackson hit three home runs on three straight pitches as the Yankees won 10-4 to close out the first of two straight World Series titles over the Dodgers.
Hensley said one of the favorite parts of his life was playing concerts with his friends; he currently plays in the “St. Peter by the Sea” orchestra, which plays at Point Pleasant (NJ). He makes a 110 mile round trip periodically from Wilmington to play. “I can’t bring myself to quit the band,” he said.
In 1978, Hensley met this girl who also played the tuba and who would become his wife. Hensley got out of the Army in 1979, and took his girlfriend out for a final date before going back to Kansas City. She didn’t want him to go, and one month later, they were married and headed to Kansas City, where Hensley got his master’s degree at UMKC, where they had three children.
Hensley has performed at the Philadelphia Academy of Music, the New York Museum of Modern Art, as well as other places.
In between speakers, a wooden nickel from Nell’s Drive In was auctioned off. It was donated by Janice Hunt and sold for $140. Nell was the late Fern Sheddrick’s mother-in-law, and Fern took over when Nell was ready to retire. All the veterans were recognized.
Jim Combs was the second speaker that day. He grew up two miles east of Denver and is the son of the late Ross and LaDora Combs. He has worked in the same lab for the last 42 years, after his uncle got him a part-time job at Gentry County Memorial Hospital, now Mosaic.
He talked about the old days growing up; he said nobody had to worry about clogged stools, because everybody had an outhouse and only two people had indoor bathrooms. Back in the 1950’s and 1960’s, people still took their eggs to town to sell. One time, Jim and some of his friends went on a spree where they knocked down a bunch of outhouses in town; it turned out one was occupied. Class A fireworks were shot off all the time. When someone finally got a color TV, it was a big sensation, and everybody came to town to check it out. Before then, everybody used to watch Lawrence Welk.
Back then, phone lines always had specific rings. For instance, two long rings and one short ring meant you knew who was on the other end. If you wanted to call out of your line, you had to call the operator and ask to be connected, for instance, to Grant City. You used to have to carry your phones in a bag. Later, users were put on party lines with other people, and there were certain people who always listened in on other peoples’ conversations. Dick Tracy and his wristwatch phones were viewed as highly futuristic; now, we have cell phones. It cost $2 to get gas, check your oil, tires, windshield wipers, and wiper fluid. People used to stand in line for 30 minutes in order to play ping pong. Later, Nintendo was the place to be.
When Combs first started work at the hospital, there was smoking and ash trays everywhere, unthinkable today. Later, computers came to the hospital which made the work go exponentially faster. He said he was once asked by a student how many blood samples he had drawn from people; he sat down and figured it out and came up with between 109,000 and 115,000.
Cars used to be very much different; Combs recounted the time he drag raced his station wagon against his friends and won. He would ride the bus to school, and they had to stop at railroad crossings. People used to come through Gentry and Worth on Old 169; later, the current version of 169 was completed. Kids still hitched train rides; kids would go and hitch rides to Jamesport and Pattonsburg on grain cars; the railroad people would let them get on.
No comments:
Post a Comment