Seems like the adage is true; at the 20-year reunion the women look fabulous and the men are balding (doesn’t mean we don’t love you!) Perhaps that’s why there were so many more women than men there. As anticipated there were many many lawyers, and lots of people just starting their families. I was happy to hear that there lots of women staying home with their babies, despite the pressure we were all under at Whitman to become career women. Others were classic results of Whitman ambition; see the woman on the floor second from the left? She is a mother of two, a full-time veternarian, and starting her own online company selling paint-the-numbers painting kits based on classic works of art (and still gorgeous)!
The photo is a blurry and dark – but that’s what I get for not wanting to cough up another $20 (because the group photo wasn’t included in the $141 at-the-door ticket price.) Instead, I ran up to a random spouse named Neil (turned out he is married to Janna Jeffries whom I knew and liked in high school) and handed him the camera.
The reunion was fun despite being poorly organized: the bar closed down without any warning at 10 pm and our invitations said 11 pm; and the DJ never set up because there wasn’t enough money to pay him. I hope Becky Reis keeps her word and plans it for the 25th reunion. About a hundred people showed up out of the 500 in the graduating class. I think probably the most critical component of a successful reunion is to get as many people there as possible.
If you want to find somebody from Whitman, I recommend a free Walt Whitman High School alumni site, called http://whitman.codeboy.net, that is run by a Whitman alumni (1994). It is a simple and easy-to-use database, but you do have to create a log-in identity for full access.
