commentary

milt thomas

Every year in Vero Beach we have a special kind of class reunion. It is special first of all, because it happens every year. Most important of all, it is open to anyone who attended Vero Beach High School at least 50 years ago. That alone should cut down attendance, but no, this event attracts between 500-700 aging graduates and spouses from class years stretching back to the 1940s.

I moved to Vero back in 1956. Yes, the community was MUCH smaller then. I tell people the school bus was a yellow Honda and the head of the Mafia was a Filipino. None of that is true, but Indian River County was about 18,000 folks, a far cry from the 160,000+ that live here today.

I graduated in 1960, when you could buy a new car for $2600, gas was 25 cents a gallon, and we were emerging from the “Placid 50s,” the post-World War II period when the world was more or less orderly. For those of us graduating that year, we were focused on finding work and going to college, but that would wait until we enjoyed our last summer on the beach.

One of my high school classmates, Mike Keen, wrote an ode to those years, with an ending that takes us right up to our present day. Here it is:

The sea was ours to play in every summer at the beach where a hidden trove of Spanish gold lay close enough to reach.

Barefoot kids dashed through the surf with sand between their toes sun-kissed girls turned gold for dates at drive-in picture shows

As Elvis sang we came of age when rock ‘n roll was all the rage. Rich or poor we crossed the tracks to gawk at fins on Cadillacs.

Count the years and come to know you were born 30,000 days ago.

The Class of 1960 left school way back then, a century after a Civil War… that’s starting up again.