Mini-Reunion of the Swarthmore High School Class of 1971
Dinner at Village Vine (l. to r.): Shirley Dodson; Sam Anderson; Bruce Kelly and wife; Barbara Weir; Brian Weir; Mark Gredler; Dennis Smyers; Tom Fleetman; Bill Shmidheiser; and Rob Lamberson.
On the heels of a very successful mini-reunion on September 24 and 25, the Swarthmore High School Class of 1971 is planning to hold a makeup reunion next year, on September 16 and17, 2022. Please save the date and make your travel plans early.
We haven’t worked out all the details yet, but next year’s reunion will definitely include a breakfast, because the highlight of the weekend this year for a lot of us was having breakfast together for a couple of hours at Occasionally Yours on Park Avenue, with the Farmers Market going on across the street, little kids excitedly pulling on their parents’ hands, live music playing, and local residents passing by as we ate breakfast at sidewalk tables outside—gradually waking up with the help of our cups of coffee and scrambled eggs.
Folks who weren’t able to make it have asked for a report, so here’s how it went. The weather was spectacular, with sunny blue skies all weekend. It began a bit crisp in the morning, we were pulling off our sweaters by 10 a.m., it was 78 degrees by late afternoon, and it was still comfortable when we dined outdoors in the evening.
Out outdoor breakfast at Occasionally Yours was on Saturday. Our conversations picked up as effortlessly as if we had only stepped away to put money in our parking meters, rather than not having seen each other for at least 5 years—and in many cases much longer.
Between that breakfast and the three-hour dinner on Saturday night, I went for a long solo walk across the Swarthmore College campus and into the Crum Woods. Everything was perfect—the grass was still green, college couples were lounging together on the broad grass fields on either side of the walk, the leaves hadn’t turned yet but acorns were falling steadily from the gigantic swamp oaks that line the walk from the train station to Parrish Hall at the top of the hill. I gathered a couple of handfuls of acorns to plant at my house, and hope to live long enough to see some of them grow to be ten feet tall.
The college campus has changed a bit. Construction is constantly going on to update, expand, and improve its facilities and accommodate increased enrollment, which has grown from 800 students in 1971 to 1,800 today. But the woods next to the college is ever the same, and the trees are as huge and magnificent as you remember. The chimes in Clothier Tower still ring every quarter hour, audible for miles around. And the fire horn still blasts every time there is an emergency in town, to call in the volunteer firefighters.
Our Saturday evening dinner was outdoors at the Village Vine, another restaurant in the heart of what is now known as Downtown Swarthmore, on Park Avenue. The town has departed somewhat from its teetotalling Presbyterian and Quaker roots: the Village Vine serves alcoholic libations, and the Swarthmore Co-op sells beer and wine. At the train station that evening, there was a music festival going on (presided over by Swarthmore’s current mayor), at which not only food but fresh-brewed beer was on offer, and in a couple of months, a new brew pub will be opening on Park Avenue. It’s not quite Gomorrah yet, but there is certainly more to do on a Saturday night than there was in our youth.
The Village Vine had booked our table for only an hour and a half, but that wasn’t happening: we ate and drank for three hours—and, by the way, the restaurant’s tasting menu dinner was spectacular.
The capstone of the weekend was an impromptu breakfast on Sunday morning, again outdoors on Park Avenue. While we sat there, who should pull up on his bicycle but the disturbingly youthful Bruce Kelly, just returning from a 20-mile round-trip bike ride between his home in Wallingford and the Delaware River behind the airport. Bruce joined us for breakfast, and we stayed and chatted until the owner politely but firmly tossed us out so that someone else could have our table.
While I wish everyone from the class could have been there, the small-group experience was more fun than the large events—it gave us a chance to have more conversations with folks we hadn’t known well in high school, to experience the surprise and delight of finding out how much we have in common, and to share many laughs, some tears, and a whole lot of unexpected insights and revelations.
