’69 REMEMBERED

Where we came from has a lot to do with where we end up. Our family, our hometown and our high school serve as the legs of the launch pad, but what we remember depends on the people who guided us along the way.

’69 REMEMBERED

          I graduated from Mosinee High School in 1969.  That same year, Neil Armstrong walked on the moon and an entire generation fell under the spell of something called Woodstock.  We were in the midst of the Vietnam War and still reeling from the assassinations, a year earlier, of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Senator Robert Kennedy.  When we stepped into the world on that warm graduation day in June, we each wore a coat that had been fashioned from those events, and a host of other influences; all stitched together during our four years of school.

          Every year it is much the same.  Graduates go out the door in their brand new coats, stiff and clean.  Some are a little small, but most tend to the large side.  From one year to the next the styles evolve.  Fasteners vary and materials change, but the function remains pretty much the same.  In those garments, we forge ahead to our futures, and the unknown.  After awhile the coat takes on a familiar feel.  Its weight and warp become our own and the special features, of which we were so keenly aware on graduation day, fade with the color.  One day, when enough time has passed, we realize that the coat has disappeared altogether.  Some might even go back to look for it, but to no avail.  What was once a coat, is now more like a second skin.

          Once the affectations of school are finally gone, one is left to wonder what, if any, substance there was?  It can’t have been the building.  Today, the building that is Mosinee High School is an amalgamation, as gangly and distended as one of her own Freshmen.  A functional marvel, to be sure, the building is many things, but memorable is not one of them.  The curriculum then?  It must be the stuff with which we were stuffed that still stuffs us.  But I must confess, I liked recess the best.  Besides, anyone trying to keep pace with the pace of change knows that sooner or later most of that stuff gets to be as threadbare as that coat I was talking about.          

          So, what’s left, except the teachers?  They are the stones that grind the grist in the mill town of Mosinee.  If I can’t remember what it was that I studied, or where, or when… I can still recall those individuals who took the time to be there for us.  After the length and breadth have been put into education, so that art balances science and test scores meet standards, the teachers are the one constant that we cannot do without.  Let’s hope that we can keep a place of honor and respect for them, far into the future.