High School, Twenty Years Later

Tonight at the Westin Hotel, I will co-emcee my John Muir High School Class of 1986 Twenty Year Reunion, “A Red Carpet Event.” Twenty-years! It’s hard to believe that it’s been that long. Luckily, I’m still good friends with several of my classmates, which will help cushion me against the nervous excitement of seeing people I haven’t laid eyes on since our 10 Year Reunion. However, I know I’ll have to dust off the old yearbook and bone up on some of the names and faces. Seeing them will bring back a lot of memories.

We got a head start on those memories and the reunion festivities Thursday night. There was a special section for our class at the annual Turkey Tussle football game at the Rose Bowl, where Muir beat PHS, 21-6. It seems like some things never change. Still, John Muir is always changing.

When I was a Mustang, Muir was a different school. There were still teachers there from the “old days” of the 1960s and 70s, who seemed more like college professors than high school teachers—Walter Mack, Richard Zweers, Victor Reyna, and Marilyn Stalder-Burke—to name a few. Advanced Placement and Honors classes were plentiful, and five languages were taught: French, German, Latin, Spanish, and Armenian. Coach Jim Brownfield ran a disciplined and talented football program that dominated Pacific League and CIF play. Our class included writers and artists, one of whom was the daughter of a Nobel Laureate; a soon-to-be world- renowned violinist; budding business and professional leaders; and an aspiring astronaut and future rocket scientist. Muir graduates went on to attend Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Cal Tech, and Art Center.

Twenty years! I can hardly remember what we were like. One thing I know for sure. When we were kids then we didn’t know what e-mail was. We still wrote letters by hand and dropped them in the mailbox. DVDs, iPods, and MySpace didn’t even exist. Nobody had pagers yet, let alone cell phones. You had to wait until you got home to call your friends. Our “remember where you were” moment was the Challenger space shuttle disaster, and there was no such thing as “80s Night” (since we were still living it!). Cassette tape and Sony “Walkmans” were all the rage, and you could still buy 45 RPM records at the store. Starbucks? What was that? I mean, how did we get by without Razor cell phones, digital videos, and YouTube?

Indeed a lot has changed in the two decades since we graduated from Muir. Many of us are married, divorced, and have children. They may even be a grandparent or two already in the group. And sadly, there are some members of our class who passed away. Tonight will be an evening of celebration, remembrance, discovery, reconciliation, closure, and perhaps old friendships will be rekindled, strengthened, and who knows, there may even be romance in the stars for some of us.

I’m still trying to talk a couple of my friends into going, just as I tell anybody that they should always attend their reunions, even if they hated high school. You never know what you’ll discover about yourself and your high school experience with the passage of time. I know that from our 10-year reunion, we’ve grown up and matured. Hopefully, we have become better people. I’m very excited to see everybody. I’m proud of being from Pasadena and of having graduated from John Muir High School. We’re all gonna look fantastic!

“MUSTANGS!…Hell yeah!”