For half a century, the student body cards were buried underneath a slab of cement, inside a rusty, small black box.
The cards had been signed by many members of the Everett High School Class of 1955. On Saturday, dozens of those graduates gathered for a somewhat anticlimactic, yet nostalgic, field trip to their alma mater.
Michael O’Leary / The Herald
They stood around a time capsule marked with their graduation year and waited to unearth the cards.
The trip was just one of the events organized by 30 class members for the graduates’ 50-year reunion. The get-together featured four days of socializing and a recital by a famous class member, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer William Bolcom.
“It was our 50th, so we thought, ‘Why not pull out all the stops?’” said Larry O’Donnell, reunion committee chairman..
At their old high school, the class members patiently stood around as O’Donnell got ready to lead the unearthing of the time capsule.
It was obvious that in 50 years not much had changed.
Class clown and former male cheerleader Dave Pettet, wearing shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, laid face-up on the time capsule’s cement seal before it was pried open. It was a photo-op and just another stunt to entertain his classmates.
“That would be typical of Dave,” O’Donnell later said.
After the cement seal was lifted off the ground, former class secretary and Everett resident Marianne Chester was handed a shovel and asked to start digging for the box.
The petite and out-going Chester didn’t hesitate.
With shovel in hand, she was the center of attention, just as a half century ago when she had to read class body minutes to hundreds of students.
“How far do I go down?” she asked.
“Only about eight feet,” O’Donnell joked.
“C’mon, Marianne, faster!” someone in the crowd shouted.
“I’ve been sick, you know,” Chester replied, still digging away.
A minute later, her shovel clunked against a metal box. The group gathered closer.
“OK, Larry, is it going to explode now?” Chester asked.
He picked up the sandwich-sized container that held the long-ago memories.
Before cutting away the cellophane tape that held the box lid on, he congratulated his digger.
“When we dig it up 50 years from now, you get to do it again,” he told Chester.
O’Donnell pulled the cards out of the box one by one. Small plumes of dust rose up as he fished around inside.
He called out the names. The class members seemed to recognize them. A few of the names had faces in the crowd to go with them.
Then O’Donnell called out, “Brad Pitt!”
The still-hip class of ‘55 burst out laughing.
The crowd clapped when O’Donnell announced the time capsule was going to be pulled up. They clapped again when that actually happened. They clapped when O’Donnell reverently thanked Victor Hirakawa, their senior class president, who had a stroke two years ago and now watched from his wheel chair.
The group had obviously outgrown their high school days, but still seemed close five decades later. They even had their same spunk.
“Well, now I’ve got to go home and dress for the big whoop-di-da, tonight,” Chester said before leaving the high school grounds, referring to the one-last reunion get-together later that day.
Reporter Chris Collins: 425-339-3436 or ccollins@heraldnet.com.
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