It is with both excitement and anxiety that I view the upcoming CLASS OF 55 REUNION. The anticipation is to see old classmates I have literally not seen in almost 40 years but yet there is a hesitancy to know how I will stack up in physical aging and experiences with people I knew only as youth and teen years.

It isn't usually as hard to write about things 20 or 30 years ago as it is to remember what happened last month or last week. I am really looking forward to our class reunion. Many of our class spent the first 12 years of their formal schooling together--that is a feat unheard of in this age of world travel and constant change. You really get to know your classmates growing up with such close year to year contact. It is strange that graduation from High School in such a small town can take people with such a common bond and thrust them into an adult life in directions where their paths may seldom or never cross again.

My mother was seriously ill when I graduated from Kinross High in 1955, so I elected to enter the University of Iowa which was only about 40 miles from home. I was registered in a smaller private college but needed the proximity to be home on weekends. It was a good decision because she passed away in December of 1955.

My first semester at Iowa there were 9,500 students and the tuition was $102--both numbers have continually gone up. I graduated in June of 1959 with a degree in Marketing and a minor in Accounting.

Graduation found job offers pretty scarce because I was 1-A for the draft and had many Korean War veterans in my graduating class. I volunteered for the draft but no one was being taken so I enlisted in the Army in August and after basic training in Colorado, entered the Army Finance School in Ft. Harrison, Indiana. I was assigned there as an instructor until 1961 and spent the last year of my enlistment in the Military Pay section at Ft. Wainwright, Alaska, just outside Fairbanks. It was quite an experience because Alaska was a new state which the people in Fairbanks didn't much care for. They like the feeling of being a wide open frontier and tried to maintain some of their former customs.

I left the service in Ft. Lewis, Washington, in August of 1962 and started my trip back to Iowa by hitching a ride to Los Angeles to pick up my 1957 Volkswagen bug, which my sister was keeping for me.

The Army was good for a single person in those days. No major problems occurred and there was a lot of travel at government expense.

Three weeks after returning to Iowa I had a job and met my future wife. My first job was as accountant and office manager for Ke Wash Fertilizer Company in Keota. The company was purchased in 1964 by Southern Nitrogen Company in Savannah, Georgia, and in 1965 that company was purchased by Kaiser Aluminum and chemical Corp. I was married to Janet O'Brien on August 3, 1963, in Parnell, Iowa, and we continued to live in Keota for five years. Our first three children, Brian, Debora, and Joan were born there.

We were transferred to the West Central Regional Office in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1968 and I worked as Sales Coordinator in Product Distribution. I then transferred to Wholesale Sales and travelled Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas. In 1971, I was promoted to Regional Accounting Manager and in 1972, our office was closed in Memphis and moved to Des Moines.

We added the last member of our family in 1977 -- Kerri is a junior at Valley High School in West Des Moines.

I continued as Accounting Manager until 1985 when the Ag Chem Division was sold and our regional office closed.

In 1986, I began working as Controller for Circle B Cashway, Inc., a chain of lumber yards throughout central Iowa. My office is in Winterset which is about a 25 minute drive through the country from our home. We live on five acres outside of West Des Moines, where we built in 1978. Janet started her own daycare 12 years ago, to help pay college tuition, and it has flourished into a thriving business.

Our three older children all went to the University of Iowa which they claim was coercion on the part of their father.

Brian is 20, married, and has a two year-old son, Joe. He has a furniture stripping and refinishing business. His wife, Lori, is a physician's assistant at a clinic in Pleasant Hill, a suburb of Des Moines. They live on acreage next door to ours.

Debora is 28 and is a physician's assistant at South Texas Rehabilitation Hospital in Corpus Christi. She is married to Pedro Cortes, a doctor originally from Mexico. They have three children, Catherine, Pedro, and Maria.

Joan is 27 and an attorney in downtown Des Moines. She lives in West Des Moines and has a fiance, Brett, who is a patent attorney with another law firm, and a golden retriever named Beau.

Kerri is 17 and in the National Honor Society, and very active in the Drumline in the Valley High School band. Unlike her father's high school, she is one of 2,200 students. We are planning trips this fall to look at colleges for the fall of 1995.

We enjoy living in the country, although we are rapidly being surrounded by new housing additions. We board horses and spend most of our leisure time doing projects around the house, gardening, and most of all, activities with our children and grandchildren.

I smile to myself when I hear people refer to the "fabulous 50's" -- those were our formative years when we went from junior high, to high school, to college, to adulthood. Were they fabulous??? I think so.

See you at the reunion!

We are looking forward to seeing everyone at our Class Reunion on May 27, 2000. At first it doesn't seem like much has happened in the six years since our last meeting. However, when the exact time is analyzed, much has occurred in our family. We now have nine grandchildren, which has more than doubled since we last met.

Our son, Brian still lives on acreage next door to ours. He is a cabinetmaker for A.F. Johnson, a local millwork company in West Des Moines. He has two sons Joe 8 and John 5.

Our oldest daughter, Debora, and her family moved from Corpus Christi, Texas, to Waterloo, Iowa, in 1996. She is currently a P.A. in a medical clinic associated with Covenant Hospital. She has added three more children, Maria, Robert, and Selena, which gives her a total of five, ranging in age from 11 to one.

Our next daughter, Joan, was married in 1996 and live a couple of miles down the street from us with her husband Brett, a son Griffin three, and a daughter Lindy two. They still have Beau, their faithful Golden Retriever.

Our youngest daughter, Kerri, graduated from the University of Iowa in May 1999, with degrees in Psychology and Art. She immediately went on active duty in the Army as a 2nd Lieutenant through the ROTC program. Her first assignment was the Army Intelligence School. She is now stationed with an engineer battalion at Fort Lewis, Washington. On December 27, 1999, Kerri was married in West Des Moines. Her husband is also in the military and is currently with a ROTC unit attached to the University of Missouri. He is trying to get reassigned to Fort Lewis, but currently has not been successful.

August 13, 1999, was my 62nd birthday. I retired from Circle B Cashway, Inc. on September 1st after 13 years as Corporate Controller. It has been absolutely great! I now help my wife in her Day care. We have added additional children, many of whom are babies, so I have to help her everyday.

Things do not stand still. If you think so, you just might find yourself getting run over. It will be great to see our classmates again and find out what's happening to them in the year 2000!

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