Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/090792/0907unk.000

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                                                                                HUGH SIDEY'S AMERICA, Page 35

You Can Go Home Again


Like 30 million Americans nationwide, the alums of Iowa's
Greenfield High hold a rendezvous with memory

By Hugh Sidey


    There is a primal undertow that captures the hearts of
most Americans 10 years or so out of high school and sweeps
them back to stand in chalky reveries, reaching for a faded
moment of innocence.

    It seems to be a kind of biorhythm, perhaps not all that
different from those that seize swallows and salmon. And it is
now epidemic in the U.S. This year the National Association of
Reunion Planners estimates that nearly 30 million of us will
defy distance, age and pinched wallets and go home again to high
school. Between Easter and Thanksgiving there will be 25,000
high school reunions. That is judged by some demographers to be
the biggest institutional movement of people annually within the
nation.

    So there I was, like a thousand other graduates from 26
states on a summer weekend, hurrying toward my tiny (pop. 2,074)
hometown of Greenfield, Iowa, to say farewell to the two weary
high school buildings so long the heart and soul of that small
patch of prairie. All living graduates out of the 3,819 given
diplomas over the past 85 years had been summoned.

    A low, sleek new high school on the north edge of town has
replaced the two stolid, red brick rectangles. And it seems
something akin to a death in the family. The desire to stand one
last time in the embrace of those weathered friends was simply
overpowering for all of us.

    Last spring Marian Piper Thompson (class of '39) picked
the notice of the reunion out of her mailbox in Townsville,
Australia. There were 10,000 intimidating miles between her and
her high school. "I'd decided I could not afford a trip this
year," she said. "But when I got the letter I knew I couldn't
stay away."

    Jay Howe ('58) had an easier journey. He hoisted a WELCOME
sign over his front porch, then walked across the street to the
grounds where his grandfather ('11) and his father ('32) were
schooled. "This is something," he marveled, noting that 2,000
people -- including more than a third of all the living
graduates -- had come to the reunion. "Has to be a record."

    The town's adversities may actually have strengthened the
student bonds. The farm economic crisis of the 1920s, followed
by the Great Depression in the 1930s, pushed the people inward.
World War II froze town development. Even after the war,
Greenfield was ignored by superhighways and shopping malls. The
kids manufactured their activities among themselves, mostly at
high school. "We truly got to love each other," said Darlene Don
Carlos Marshall ('45).

    Public high school was an American invention, ironically
flourishing most in the Depression, when struggling parents
poured what resources and energy they had left into high
schools, hoping to give their children a better life. About 82%
of Americans now graduate from high school. There are 150
million grads alive and aging, and most of them at one time or
another feel the inner tug and will go to a reunion, which in
reality is a rendezvous with memory.

    Ivan ("Goat") Brown ('42) drove from Jacksonville,
Florida, eager to spin his story about the Halloween night he
loaded an outdoor privy on his old Plymouth and set it up in the
school yard. Margaret Coffey McGrath ('29) of Chevy Chase,
Maryland, laughed when she recounted cutting classes to attend
a football game in a nearby town. "My mother drove us," she
said, "but we got punished anyway. We had to memorize the
preamble to the Constitution."

    Lucile Adamson Slocum ('44) from Minneapolis had a special
memory to honor. Her English and drama teacher, Miss Spence, had
opened a world of meaning and beauty for her. Back in the
shadowy gym she felt again that bright, intense figure coaching
her kids through the class plays. Dorothy Spence Illson later
became head of Life magazine's copydesk in New York City. She
died two years ago.

    Retired farmer James Law ('14) of Stuart, Iowa, sat in his
wheelchair relishing the stories of playing on an undefeated
football team and knowing the greatest school legend of all
time: sprinter Chuck Hoyt ('14). Hoyt learned to run chasing
ponies on his farm. "He was all legs," chuckled Law. Some legs.
Hoyt took his first train ride when he was 14, to the University
of Chicago's Stagg Field, swept the 100-m and 220-m dashes. He
was asked to be on the 1912 Olympic team, but his widowed mother
needed him home. Besides, she insisted, he was too young, and
there would be another Olympics in 1916. War smashed his dream,
but he went on to set a world record in the 220 and coach at
the University of Michigan and Yale.

    Old Greenfield High -- one small seedbed of America -- was
still feeling good about itself this summer. And as a huge
prairie sun went down, the grads jammed into the gym for the
last dance. When the music ended after midnight, the floor was
still crowded, the alums savoring every heartbeat.

    Greenfield police chief Bob Miller wrote the final entry.
Not one incident of bad behavior was recorded. Quite a nice
report card for the end of a long, long high school term.