The Catonsville High School Class of 1940 met for its last reunion Friday, commemorating 75 years to the day since the class graduated high school.
"I can still feel the perspiration," said Tabler Isaacs, who said he spent the ceremony sweating it out in the top row at The Lyric, in downtown Baltimore.
For Friday afternoon's special 75-year reunion, Isaacs compiled a "yearbook" for the group of alumni and family, complete with old school photos and current addresses and contact information for former classmates.
"I'm so glad that you're all here, and suddenly I'm very sad that we won't do this again," said Shirley Hall, a Towson resident who helped organize the reunion.
The group has been gathering yearly for 15 years to share of stories and catch up with one another. Before the yearly reunions began, they met once every five years.
The reunions have always been well attended, said George Winter, one of 11 alumni who attended last week's lunch at Matthew's 1600.
Winter, the former class treasurer, travels up from Florida just for the event. "It's been a remarkable journey," he said in welcoming the other attendees.
Before moving to Florida, he said he and his wife used to do a lot of the organizing for the reunions.
"It's been a wonderful trip and we've had help along the way," he said.
Upon graduation, he said, the class still had $2,000 in its fund for events and other school-related activities. Usually, that money would be donated back to the school, but, sensing that the class was pretty close-knit, the class was permitted to keep $500 of the funds for future functions, Winter said.
"That sounds like little. But remember, two-cent stamps were what you used back then," he said on the decision in 1940.
With the eruption of World War II, the class didn't get a chance to host a reunion for some time, Winter said. The conflict may also be a large part of the reason for why the alumni are so bonded now.
His wife, who died two years ago, graduated two years behind him at Catonsville High, but he can't remember her class ever getting together after graduation, he said.
"I think it gave us a little more adhesion," Winter said, noting that four of their classmates died in the war.
The classmates, who are all in their 90s now, graduated from the Bloomsbury Avenue school, at the present site of the Bloomsbury Community Center, 14 years before Brown v. Board of Education forced Baltimore County to begin the process of integrating its schools.
Today, much of the class lives at Charlestown retirement community, off Maiden Choice Lane. A few even live just a few doors down from each other.
One of the Charlestown residents, Raymond Servary, joked with a table full of other alumni about pranks they used to play during their time at Catonsville High.
"I was bad," he said, adding that his favorite memory of school was putting other students on top of the water fountain. "We had a ball."
Hall said it has been interesting to see how much has changed in the 75 years since she received her diploma.
For one thing, she said, the prom was held in the gym. The homemade balloon decorations she said classmates assembled at the school are nothing like the decorations she sees at proms today, she said.
With only five high schools in Baltimore County, far fewer than the 25, many of the Catonsville students, including herself, had to travel some distance to go to school every day. Students came from as far southwest as Lansdowne and Baltimore Highlands and as far north as Randallstown.
There was also no 12th grade, she said. Most students graduated at the age of 16.
Christina Miller Channell, who lives with her family on the Eastern Shore and doesn't make it to many class reunions, told her table about how her dad would sit on the rooftop when school let out to watch for his daughter and make sure she wasn't getting into any trouble.
"It was a busy place," Henry Foltz said of the high school, where he played lacrosse and baseball. "It's good we keep in touch."
"It was a good school," Hall said. "It still is."