Leslie Karst

It Was Fifty Years Ago Today

It’s hard to believe, but it’s been fifty years since I graduated from high school and started as a freshman at the University of California, Santa Cruz—home of the fighting banana slugs.

Fifty years? Yikes! I don’t feel that old. But there it is.

the bike path at UCSC

So next month I’ll be attending my 50th reunion of the Santa Monica High School class of ’74 up the coast from SM in Malibu, where many of my classmates lived and where many a fabulous party was held back in the day. (Samohi is the alma mater of lots of celebrities—Sean Penn, Robert Downey, Jr., and Rob Lowe, to name a few; all younger than me, but my sister overlapped with Sean—as well as the location for some famous films, including Rebel Without a Cause.)

I’m very much looking forward to that reunion, but what was truly fun was another one I co-hosted here in Santa Cruz last month—to celebrate fifty years since living together in Dorm 6 at Stevenson College, UCSC. The dorm houses only about sixty students, so we all became quite close after a year of co-habitation.

I was on the UCSC fencing team my senior year

There are a handful of us who still live in Santa Cruz, but most of the people who attended the reunion I hadn’t seen since college. And yes, we’ve all changed quite a bit over fifty years: lots of gray hair (and balding), and plenty of pot bellies.

But you know what? Even after fifty years, it was almost as if no time had passed whatsoever (other than that gray hair). This was especially true when our reunion group was given a tour of our old dorm, and we ran through the halls and into our old rooms hooting and hollering and reminiscing about parties we’d had (a Mardi Gras celebration featuring poker and cases of Pabst Blue Ribbon bock beer stands out in my memory), records we’d played (lots of Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan), and classes we’d taken (a grad student living in the dorm basement kindly tutored several of us humanity students on physics for an astronomy class we were taking).

with my college roommate Cathy in our old room

It was absolutely marvelous, getting to hang out again for an entire weekend with so many of my college pals. So, here’s to old friends—ones who’ve known you since your were just a kid!

dumpster diving for books at our old college

Readers: Do you like reunions? Have you gone to any recently, or are you going in the near future?

34 thoughts on “It Was Fifty Years Ago Today”

  1. Next year will be my 50th high school reunion and I’m hoping that I will be able to attend and see friends that I haven’t seen in person in years. We do chat on FB. The only reunion that I did attend was out 5th and it was too soon.

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      1. Leslie, your story reminded me of going back to visit my alma mater, Chapman College in Orange. It’s now Chapman University, and they continue to grow. My husband and I were back for Homecoming one year and they were getting ready to raze one of the old dorm buildings. Along with a pal, we prowled through the empty rooms, reminiscing, remembering who lived where and with whom, and had a ball. I think we have on old drawer pull clattering around, stolen from one of our rooms.

        I moved a lot as a kid, but did go to one of my high school reunions and was able to reconnect with a few old pals. I’ve kept in touch with lots more college pals, which has been a joy over the years. But going back to Chapman is weird and wrong. It’s not the same place it was all those years ago. I prefer to remember it the way it was.

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  2. Leslie, you better book a visit with me into your Santa Monica trip! 😉 And my cousin’s kid – who is also my cousin, I guess – just graduated from UCSC.

    I hated high school so much I graduated in 3 years. This put me between two classes. But we’d moved to Scarsdale when I was 10, so I had a whole other past in Queens before that. Those are the kids I’d love to reconnect with. But the relationships are lost to the mists of time. I did do some online reunions with my graduating class and everyone is nice but I only spent a year with them so there’s no big connection. The class I should have graduated with is having a reunion this year and I’d go, but I have a conflict.

    However, I adore my Tulane reunions! They’re on steroids now and are SO much fun. Plus, who’d pass up a good, solid reason to visit New Orleans?!

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    1. One of the things I like about social media (and there are tons of things I don’t like) is how it’s allowed me to reconnect with lots of friends from junior high and high school. But getting to see them in person will be marvelous. (Can you say HUGS?) I can only imagine how fun a Tulane reunion would be–ha!

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  4. I’m glad you got to do that! It looks like you had a great time. I will congratulate you on being on the fencing team. I took fencing lessons once from a family friend who had gotten a silver medal in the Olympics and was teaching fencing. Maybe because I have no sense of balance? But he told me afterwards that I was the worst student he had ever had.

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      1. No, it wasn’t rude. He was a good friend and he was right! I have no sense of balance. I couldn’t stay on that line you’re supposed to stay on.

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  5. hestia here.

    I’ve never been invited to a reunion.
    i went to my 20th, because I happen to be in town that weekend visiting my father and I crashed it. I spent 3 days listening to everyone tell me they recognized my face but had no idea who I was. 😝

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  6. I’ve only ever been to my 10th reunion for high school, which I enjoyed–though I didn’t end up staying in touch with everyone I met. Over the summer, I visited a college friend, and she went to back for the yearly reunion & talked about how much (or, actually little) our dorm had changed.

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  7. I went to my 10yr high school reunion and I have no desire to attend another. I wasn’t friends with a lot of them.

    But I faithfully attend Reunion at my university every five years. Next year is 30! I love spending a weekend on campus and reconnecting with my classmates is a blast. But I splurge on a hotel room these days. No dorm beds for this back and knees. LOL

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      2. My school offers dorm housing to reunion attendees, and as alumni age they get better and better accommodations. One year I swear we had the same straw-filled, burlap-y mattresses they must have used back in the (literal) 1700s.

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  8. This is fantastic, Leslie, and I absolutely love the photos!!

    I not only live in the same town as the high school I attended, but my kids attended that high school–and my son even had one of my former boyfriends as a teacher! Talk about a small town!

    That being said, I think I’ve been to all of the reunions. I found that over time, the little differences that kept people apart seemed to fall away and everyone was grown closer. What a beautiful thing!

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  10. I attend every reunion for college (every 5 years) and high school (sporadic), pretty much without fail. I keep hoping for an elementary school reunion, and even reunions with former work colleagues, lol. I love seeing friends from the past, but also meeting people I never knew back when we were in school. (My high school had about the same number of students as my college, about 500/class at the time.) It’s fascinating to me how everyone’s lives have unfolded–and I’m always struck by the ways many change direction, planned or not.

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