My 40th Class Reunion

Wednesday, September 30

I just returned from LA where my 40th high school reunion was held: Santa Monica High School, Class of '69. It was an emotional occasion . . . there is something momentous about this milestone.

I thought of all the great things our generation was privy to: the great music of the 60's; the Sexual Revolution; the Civil Rights movement; the advent of computers and the internet; America's unprecedented prosperity; the rise of Complementary Medicine (which I witnessed first-hand!)

Reunions 10, 20, 25, 30. OK, you could kid yourself that you were immortal and enjoy an endless succession of get-togethers. But at 57, or 58, you cross the threshold of denial: we could see it reflected in the faces around us. Yes, we ARE aging.

Adding to the bittersweet ambience, there was the ever-expanding roll-call on the "In Memoriam" page of our Class of '69 web site. Morbid curiosity drove me there again and again and there were some shocks as I learned of some of my classmates' untimely demises.

In the 70's it was drugs, Vietnam, car accidents and suicides. In the 80's it was AIDS. In the 90's, a disturbing trend emerged as colleagues began succumbing to cancer.

In the weeks before the reunion, one dear friend from our class lost her struggle with breast cancer. A month before the event, one of the golden-haired surfer boys of '69 commemorated his last Endless Summer. His wake was held, surfer-style, on the beach. One of our classmates blogged about it on the class website, and said he was sure looking forward to the upcoming reunion.

Then, incredibly, a mere week before the event, the blogger's name appeared on the In Memoriam page. Cause of death listed as "solo car accident". His funeral was held the morning of the reunion.

Determined to affirm life and raise the flag for fitness and indefatigability, I called some of my California friends and arranged for a counter-demonstration: a Saturday morning pre-reunion run on the beautiful Santa Monica promenade which was the backdrop to our youthful antics. Four buddies gathered in the early morning to bang out a few miles for immortality.

Later that evening, I took a deep breath and walked into the beautiful California beach club where the event was held. There, I was confronted with familiar faces that seemed photo-shopped in unpredicted ways.

Turnout was spectacular, given how dispersed our class is. People made extraordinary efforts to fly in from all parts of the country to attend. There were some definite surprises. Folks that were rail-thin in high school had filled out amply. Others who were chunky had paradoxically thinned down. There was grey hair, and bald pates, and--yes--wrinkles.

And the usual assortment of mid-life health woes. Several women were breast cancer survivors. Many were nursing bad backs, knees and hips. One of my elementary school buddies had survived a series of debilitating strokes. I considered myself fortunate indeed.

I had an interesting conversation with the class track star, a charismatic kid who had gone on to NCAA competition in the high hurdles at UCLA. Now a successful businessman, he was sidelined with old running injuries. When I shared with him my late-life conversion to jock-dom, he opined that maybe my egg-head proclivities in high school and college had preserved my joints for middle-age athleticism. I thought of the fable of the tortoise and the hare.

The most accomplished people in my class were the engineers, the people who were in the computer club, used to carry slide rules in belt holsters, and had pocket protectors with spare mechanical pencils. They're the ones who went to Stanford and MIT and spawned the computer revolution and the internet, perhaps my generation's signature accomplishments.

Someone even remembered that I was notorious in elementary school for my dissection of earthworms--I guess it was a prelude to my medical career.

I knew it was time to leave at 1:30 AM when the class prankster reverted to form and started to pass around helium balloons so we could all talk in funny voices. Didn't want that to be the last memory of the 40th reunion, but it was.

After what seemed like a long session of speed-dating, exchanging life stories with dozens of classmates, the night drew to a close with a unanimous pledge to re-up ten years hence for the 50th!