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Subject: Some Thoughts on Your Website
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 2004 22:15:38 -0400
From: "Keith C. Smith" keithc.smith@verizon.net
To: esqeddie@ix.netcom.com

Eddie: I don't know if anyone would give a damn about some thoughts
I wrote down a month ago.  I attach them for whatever they are worth. 
Thanks for your work on the website.  As you can see, your efforts have
brought pleasure to me. 

Keith

Thoughts on the í06 Reunion 

 In early September I was traveling by train in southern Poland and found 
myself in a compartment with a bunch of high school students (seniors, as it 
turned out).  One of the kids asked me to describe what high school was like 
in America.  Since we had been discussing U.S.-European relations, the question 
caught me by surprise and I fumbled around trying to describe how it was in the 
late 1950s.  I doubt, however, that the Polish students could understand the 
atmosphere of the mid-50s in a place as different as Southern California.  

After a few minutes, they politely switched the conversation back to American politics.  
As the train rolled along, however, I began thinking about the web page that Eddie Moses
had put together, and the unexpected pleasure I have had reading about people who 
I havenít seen in almost 50 years. Having spent most of my life living outside the U.S., 
I have never attended a high school or university reunion, and Iím looking forward to 
the first one in ë06.  

As I looked at those Polish students, I wondered what it would have been like to have
attended senior year with people who had experienced as much of the pain of life as had 
their Polish parents or grandparents.  I even speculated about what it would have been 
like to attend school with the ìMuir ë56ersî after they had experienced 50 years of reality. 
Are we really more interesting than we were 50 years ago, or has much of the fun gone out 
of us?  How are we changed by being on the other side of the generation gap? How are we 
dealing with retirement or impending retirement; with anticipation or dread? 

My wife is from Norway, and she has a group of about 10 women who have remained close 
for the past 50 years, even with those who have moved abroad.  They stay in touch 
(without being intrusive) with each other and offer their moral and even financial 
support when life takes an unexpectedly bad turn.  Itís a wonderful advantage.  
In the U.S., most of us move away from where we attended high school.  I thought that 
being a father and grandfather would take care of the need to maintain ties with the past;
it doesnít do it completelyñ at least for me.  I suspect that some connection with our childhood
or adolescent contemporaries is important. 

I surprise myself by reading more regularly than I would have expected the e-mailed narratives 
that people send in about their lives over the past half century.  I hope to keep reading these 
narratives, even if I didnít know the person or have nothing but vague memories of him/her.  
For some strange reason, this re-linkage with the past is becoming important to me.  Iím grateful 
to Eddie and the others who have put together and maintain the Class of ë56ís website.  

Thanks.

Keith Smith ñ Class of 1956

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