Many attendees have requested that we share the remarks that Jim Jackson made at our Saturday night gathering.  We are glad to reproduce it here.

Saturday, September 8, 2012
James D. Jackson

We should take this time to acknowledge the hard work and extraordinary contributions of the Organizing Committee and those others who have made in-kind contributions.

Our chair, Tom Whalen, has been hung with the job of heading up this effort, as he has for a few reunions now.  Anyone who needs advice on how to herd chickens should consult Tom.

Denny Doorn has served as Treasurer for just as long and he deserves a direct ascent to heaven for his equanimity in the face of some scary moments when we had a case of the Shorts.

Carole Brown is our web mistress and Buzz Book editor.  She has left clumps of her hair lying around the apartment while trying to make that web site work for us.

Don and Susan Fendrich Kavanaugh, Alan and Mary Nordlie Swanson, Lee Halstenson, Susan Everist Scott, Bruce and Mary Eide Boyd, Grace Nelson Bass and Debby Darroch Reynolds round out the Organizing Committee.

Alan Swanson, Tom Whalen, Mary Eide Boyd, Carole Brown and Dave Van Veldheizen have made welcome and substantial in-kind contributions.

A special shout-out goes to those who made anonymous gifts of cash to defray expenses for guests and others.  There is still time to make a gift.  Hand your check to Denny Doorn.

We're mighty grateful for Susan Fendrich Kavanaugh with her constant but effective hectoring on the Facebook Nostalgia Club page.  She got lots of people to attend these festivities who might otherwise have passed.

We will hear from the Doc Walker Quartet tonight.  Out classmate Doc is an authentic Sioux Falls institution and a valued contributor to the music scene in the Sioux Empire.  Our thanks go out to him, with his hands at the keyboard, and to his group:  Jerry Houpt from Sioux City on Bass; CJ Kocher, Sax, a Jazz Professor at USD; and Jim McKenny on Drums, a Jazz Professor from South Dakota State.  So, prepare to be wowed by the Doc Walker Quartet.  They'll play in a few minutes.  In the meantime . . .

I've been asked to say a few words on the theme of what makes the Washington Senior High School Class of 1962 exceptional, and all other classes from all other schools dreary and uninteresting.  I have this job, I suppose, because people identify me with a certain rhetorical flourish called hyperbole.  This should be easy. . .

Fat chance!  I mean, No Way.

First, let us compare ourselves to the demographic and actuarial charts.  That is, how do we compare to other groups of 600 or so mostly white Midwestern folks born more or less in 1944?

Oh, we have about the right number of survivors.  We have the right number of Baccalaureate, Masters, professional and doctoral degrees.  We have no more than our fair share of wealthy and prestigious people.  We can identify a fitting number of financial strugglers and fiscal profligates as well.  We are undistinguished when it comes to the ratio of wage-earners to entrepreneurs and hustlers.

We have precisely the right tally of clergy and jailbirds.  No help there.  Just so, one can impute that the percentage of scoundrels among is spot-on the mark.  That includes those who paid a debt to society and also those who skated.  I could be more precise if my friend Terry would name his accomplices. . .

Nothing special yet, kids.

Do not fear to presume that we also sport the correct fraction of marriage, divorce, serial monogamy, and illicit affairs of the heart and other organs.  Exceptional?  Hardly.

We are susceptible to the same diseases, emotional stresses, misfortunes and tumults that afflict one and all.

We are both religious and un-churched with the proper distribution of faiths and pursuits any given Sunday.  We are divided politically and hog-tied with the rest of the country as a result.  So what?

No Nobel prizes, no Medals of Honor or Medals of Freedom or Field Medals.  No private 757s.  No captains of industry.  No United States Senators.  No Hollywood star makers.  No diplomats plenipotentiary.

Nope.  When it comes to the statistics, the great, the holy, the powerful, the oligarchs and plutocrats, there is no particular -- what does Oprah say?  "There is no there there."  Obviously, we've been looking in the wrong place.

Here we are gathered - the survivors of a certain wonderful time and place.  We are the remnants of what once was, and the embodiment of what that special time and place has wrought.  I don't mean that in a bumper sticker sort of way.  And I most certainly don't mean it in that Facebook "isn't this charming?" sort of way.

Of course, our memories are faulty and our limbs work creakier; most of us take blood pressure meds, brook no ambiguity, and have extraordinarily cute and accomplished grandchildren.  We are what we have made of ourselves and are not the least bit characterizeable.  Nor are we eighteen-year-olds with bad knees that have lost interest in peer pressure.  Certainly we are not people yearning for the high school hop.

Rather, there has never been nor will there ever be anything quite like us -- wholly unique:  blasted, hammered, and shaped by our time and our experience.

Judging from the full-of-life conversations we have enjoyed over the last couple of days -- the happy tears, the shameless embracing, the head-back monkey laughter -- something significantly and powerfully right has happened.  Take time to reflect on the gravity of that.  Go ahead, I'll wait. . .

It is our privilege to be who we are and when we are.  I ask you -- Could there be a better cause for celebration?

That's it.  Please have fun.  If you have any complaints, please write them on a very small piece of paper, put it in your shoe, and save it for the next reunion.

END