Of all of the emotional risks I have taken in my life, the decision to go back to Atlantic, Iowa for my 35th high school reunion – the very first high school reunion I’ve managed to attend – has to be one of my scarier leaps of faith. In typing those words, I realize how foolish that sounds. What was so scary about showing up for a party- eating some delicious Iowa pork- and reconnecting with some old friends?
Well, let me tell you! I was scared that I would walk into the party and not recognize a single person… or be recognized by anyone else. Actually, I was pretty sure that wouldn’t happen, because my long-time dear friend Allison Nichols Greenwalt would surely be there. (She’s the person who persuaded me to go, convinced that I would have a great time.) But knowing one person at a party is not exactly the ticket to a having fantastic time- although I imagined that sticking right by her side all night long like a conjoined twin would make the experience at least tolerable for me- (if not for her.) Actually, I graduated from a class of about 160 students, so it’s not as though I expected to find a roomful of complete strangers at my reunion. But for the people who were there, would it be awkward? Would they be interested in me? Would I be interested in them? What would we talk about? Would people call me Craig Burch instead of Greg Berg? Or worse yet, would they mix me up with my brother Steve? And would I end up feeling like a shy person on the periphery, an overweight college music professor with no kids – in a roomful of robust former football players and lovely former cheerleaders who have kept in touch and could pick up right from where they last left off? You could see the kind of uncomfortable scenarios I was dreaming up with my overly active imagination.
And actually, I didn’t even realize how nervous I was about this reunion until I was loading my car Thursday evening and realized that I had packed three different pairs of pants and four different shirts, for twelve different options for what to where to the actual reunion. What 53-year-old guy with a master’s degree worries that much about what to wear to his high school reunion? But I realized I was chasing my tail over how I could look comfortable without looking like I was trying too hard to look comfortable – or wear something a little flashy without looking like I was trying to draw attention to myself. Around and around around I went, and that shows how incredibly vulnerable I was feeling about this. And then, as it turned out, my schedule got a little bit screwed up late Friday afternoon and I had no time (or place, for that matter) to change into the outfit I had finally picked out to wear … so I went to the reunion wearing my blue jeans and Door County polo shirt. It was almost like God was saying “Snap Out of It! It’s your 35th high school reunion! You’re not testifying before Congress! Get a Grip!”
So I just went as I was …. and in a moment that seemed to be God’s way of saying “it’s going to be just fine” when I drove up to my classmate Alan Zellmer’s beautiful farm, the very first person I saw was my good friend Allison – and right next to her was another very good friend from choir, Carol Olsen Swenson, whom I’d been in touch with recently when her church choir sang my “Great and Glorious Light, ” – and next to her another good friend from choir, Teresa Waters Gordon, who has become a facebook friend as well. The sight of the three of them right off the bat could not have been more reassuring! And just beyond them, I spotted and easily recognized six or seven guys, none of whom were close friends of mine but who I simply remembered …. and in an instant I knew that this was going to be a fun night and that all of my mental and emotional thrashing around was energy I could have better spent in a thousand other ways. What was I so worried about? And the first time someone came up to me and I didn’t immediately recognize them…. which happened almost right away…. the sky didn’t turn black and the earth didn’t swallow me up. Actually, that particular person, Teresa Brewer Seddon, who is a facebook friend of mine, was a very good sport about it and we had a great little chat. And from there, it was one fun conversation after another, and in most cases it was with people I had literally not seen in 35 years.
To be sure, there were certainly some chats that were mighty short and some where I had the distinct impression that whoever I was talking to had only the vaguest notion of my existence even back in high school, let alone 35 years after the fact. I think the fiction I had harbored then until now was that everyone in our class knew who I was and was aware of my skill as a singer even if they weren’t a music person … if for no other reason because of those school assembly concerts that they made everyone attend whether they wanted to or not. So I had actually talked myself into believing that even the stars of the football team were all paying attention at those concerts and maybe even nudging each other from time to time and whispering “wow, that Greg Berg guy can really sing!” Yeah, right. But even as I talked to some of these same guys all these years later, guys I remember watching on the football field or basketball court or in tennis competitions or track meets, I realized that whether or not they knew me or remembered anything about me didn’t actually matter all that much. We were all AHS alums- glad to be seeing each other again- and as someone said so wisely, “time is a great leveler.” That meant, among other things, that I could sit across from someone like Jeff Riggs, a football and wrestling star at our school (and maybe in other sports as well) – someone I barely knew even back then, and who would have scared me speechless just from being an intimidating mountain of muscle – and have a perfectly cordial chat and even manage to get a couple of laughs out of him!
And speaking of laughs, it was an absolute delight to reconnect with Mark Fudge in person, after enjoying our Facebook Friendship over the last couple of years. Same thing with John Worthington, whom I did not recognize at all until the moment he turned to someone next to him and started laughing. I instantly knew him from his smile and his laugh, even though I had not experienced either of them in 35 years. Same thing with Kandie Furne, someone I feel like I know better now via Facebook than I ever knew back then. I was so glad to be able to catch up with Lisa Pellett and Linda Dimig and Tom Williams and Dick Bruce and Tim Retz and Dallas Huddleson and Roger Warne and on and on …. and part of what was fun about that was that each of these talks brought to mind other classmates not in attendance. I think one of the best reasons to go to a reunion like this is because it has the effect of tilling the soil of one’s personal history and bringing long forgotten memories to the surface that would otherwise remain out of reach. So I drove away from this reunion not just happy to have reconnected with these particular classmates, but also glad to be thinking about friends like Stan Nielsen and Eric Swanson and JoEllyn Drake and Lori Mallette and all kinds of other AHS classmates and schoolmates who are all part of who I am and where I come from.
This was the very first high school reunion I have ever managed to attend. I very much wanted to attend my 10th reunion back in 1988 – and was planning on it – until my folks announced that the whole family was vacationing in Door County and that they really hoped I would join them. I was bummed to miss my reunion but excited to see Door County for the first time…. and then when my mom died quite suddenly less than six months later, I was incredibly grateful that I chose that family vacation over my reunion. But after that, life just got incredibly busy and complicated and my schedule had made it impossible to even think about attending any of the subsequent reunions. But this summer, with the RTG finally doing a summer show (“Rocky Horror Show”) for which I had no responsibilities, I decided that this was an opportunity that just had to be seized, in part because you only have a 35th high school reunion once in your life. And in five years, barring unforeseen circumstances, I plan to make every effort to come back for my 40th. Because I know now that it’s okay to forget a name or forget a face – or to be told to your face “I don’t remember you at all” (which also happened to me at this reunion) – or to be called “Craig Burch.” And I know now that nobody cares what you wear or if you remembered to shave. And nobody seems to remember just how nerdy and awkward you were – or seems to notice any of the nerdiness that’s still there to this day. We all have our frailties – and by now, we’ve all tasted plenty of failure and frustration in our lives, along with all of the good stuff. And by experiencing all of that, one way or another, we begin to realize that while each of us is utterly unique, we are all so much more alike than unalike… from Darrell Paulsen, the best fullback in the history of Atlantic High school …. to Craig Burch, who’s a pretty decent singer and now a college voice teacher … who both graduated a long time ago with some really great people from a really great high school in the really great town of Atlantic, Iowa.
pictured above: These are the alumni who were there for our 35th reunion. That’s me on the far right in the back end. Everyone in the back row is standing on folding chairs, and mine actually sunk a good six inches into the ground by the time everyone was done snapping photos. (So I guess the earth almost did swallow me up when I didn’t recognize Teresa Brewer Seddon!) The organizers of the event had actually hoped that more would attend, and they are planning to be more aggressive for the 40th. But even this relatively small group of graduates made for an exciting and fun evening.