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Whose job is it to plan a 40-year high school reunion?

By Dick Sparrer

So who knew?

Who knew when we were playing on the beach and running up and down the boardwalk in Santa Cruz on Senior Sneak Day?

Who knew when we were dancing to the music of The New Arrivals on Senior Ball night in the exquisitely-decorated girls gym?

And who knew when we were crowning the beautiful Leslie Morgan the Homecoming Queen and the not-so-beautiful Mike Greene King Ugly?

Who knew then who was supposed to organize our 40th class reunion?

Let's see ... we were about 17 or 18 years old back old then. Nobody was thinking too much about reunions--we were a little more interested in girls, parties, summer jobs, girls, college, burgers and fries ... and did I say girls? (Well, the guys were, anyway.)

At any rate, the last thing on our minds was a reunion. We left Los Gatos High School in the summer of 1967 full of expectations and ready to take on the challenges that life had in store for us (fine, so I'm no valedictorian, but you get the idea). And I can say with a pretty healthy level of confidence that none of us were thinking about going back to the school--heck, we'd just taken four years to get out!

But after 40 years, you do start to get a little curious. Does Jim Zanardi still have his hair? Can Craig Wilder still dunk a basketball? Do Margie Daines and Cheri Evans still have spirit? Did Gordon George pick up a few extra pounds? Is Cheryl Fritz still a beauty? Will Dave Duarte still try to dump me headfirst into a garbage can (hey, it was only once, and it was back in our freshman year)?

In order to find out the answers to those burning questions, though, we needed to have a 40th reunion. And how we were supposed to know who was in charge of such a thing?

You can bet Charlie Eddie didn't know. He's been too busy chasing that little white ball down the fairway as a golf pro.

You can bet Howard May didn't know, either. He's spent his adult years yanking out bicuspids and molars.

And you can bet Michel Tschann didn't know, or really care. After all, he was our foreign exchange student from France and probably never expected to come back here anyway ... c'est la vie!

As it turns out, though, someone knew, and he's been planning this thing all along. Well, maybe not every minute of every day since the time we took that walk across the front lawn on June 16, 1967, to pick up our diplomas, but at least in time to make it happen in the summer of our 40th year as high school graduates.

Dan Hutfless knew. Somehow he knew that it was the job of the freshman class president to plan the thing, something about the order of progression (senior class president, the 10-year; junior class president, the 20-year; and so on).

Sounds like we were pretty astute voters back in the fall of 1963 when we cast our ballots for Danny, whose campaign slogan if I remember correctly was, "Vote for me or I'll slug you in the arm!" (Yeah, I made that up ... I don't really remember voting for anyone.)

Anyway, we selected wisely as freshmen, Dan has kept up his part of the bargain and now the glorious Los Gatos High School class of 1967 will hold its 40th class reunion this summer.

Thanks goodness that responsibility went to the freshman class president and didn't fall to the dorkiest kid in the freshman class, whose only claim to fame was that he tripped and fell down just about every staircase on campus (unfortunately, that I didn't make up!). Because of it, on July 28 we're going to have a class reunion.

Now comes the hard part--studying the Wildcat '67, the yearbook from our senior year (OK, so I already have ... how else would I have remembered about Mike Green being King Ugly?). So I pulled out the dusty old book over the weekend to check out my classmates. When I cracked it open, an old report card fell out (hey, where'd that C- in Spanish come from ... Señor Garza, no esta bien) and so did a flood of memories.

Boy, I'm sure glad I voted for Dan Hutfless. We ended up with a great class president who proved to be true to his commitment, and I didn't get slugged in the arm.

The Los Gatos class of '67 will hold its 40th reunion on July 28, 5 p.m., at the Los Gatos Lodge, 50 Los Gatos Saratoga Road (a limited number of rooms are available at a discount if reserved by June 28, call 408.354.3300). The cost is $50 per person. For more information, call Mary Ellen (Fish) Graham, 408.348.8700; Greg Fowler, 408.353.2053; Jim Zanardi, 408.888.3475; Richard Pankhurst, 530.343.2581; or Lynn or Dan Hutfless, 530.343.9503; or visit lghs67reunion@hotmail.com.

Want to talk? Drop me a note at dsparrer@community-newspapers.com or call me at 408.354.3110, ext. 31.