Foggy Memories

While I was at the Reunion this weekend, I got to look through a few Annuals. At SHAPE, high school began in the 7th grade and I left in the 6th, so the Yearbooks from the year after we left had pictures of many of my classmates.

In the military, people come and go rather quickly. In one year's time, more than half of the students in the 7th grade were new. One of the guys at the Reunion told me that there were 5 families, all with classmates of his, on the same flight back to the States with his family. Five not only left the exact same day, but were on the same flight. Interesting.

Anyway, there were a lot of new faces in that one year after we left, but there were a lot that I recognized, also. It had been a very long time since I had seen pictures of my elementary classmates, and it jogged lots of memories and made we wonder what had happened to all those people.

When I got home, I decided to begin searching for some of them and was surprised to discover that one of my old friends that I had already found was in contact with another old friend. Andrea Trumbull, whose father was a teacher in the high school, lived in Belgium her entire childhood. She graduated from SHAPE and moved to the States to attend college, living with an older sister who was married. We've been in touch for about a year now. But when I went to her Facebook page, I discovered she had found the third in our trio, Julie Fossum. I've thought about Julie so often, and even tried to find her, but that was before Facebook and I had no idea if she had married and what her name might be.

Of course, I immediately sent Julie and friend request. Last night, we exchanged messages, getting caught up on each other's lives. From her friends list, I found another of our classmates, Jerry Pearce. I'm sure there were lots of kids that I didn't know well, but Jerry wasn't one of them. He was a fun-loving, larger-than-life guy, and I was delighted to discover him again. Funny thing is, though, his profile picture looked exactly the same as how I remembered him from the 5th grade, except for a little facial hair. I would've recognized Julie from her picture, too. She looks very much the same, but looks even more like her older brother looked back in SHAPE.

This has gotten me motivated. I'm working hard at finding some of my other classmates that I still remember. Not a lot of luck so far. I've made contact with a Suzy Stack and a Jerry Minerich, but both of them are not the ones from my past.

I'm going to keep trying. More and more people are joining Facebook all the time and most women seem to include their maiden names. It's the best possibility I've ever had of finding these old friends.