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06/19/2018 08:07 AMIt felt more like walking into a family reunion than a school reunion at Valley Regional High School’s Class of 1956 62nd reunion at the Essex Yacht Club.
“My classmates were my brothers and sisters and my classmates were my mothers and fathers,” said Bob Sjogren, who not only was the class president his sophomore year but who also began the reunion by singing the school’s alma mater in front of a slideshow of pictures featuring all his classmates.
In previous years, the class held its reunion at the Dock & Dine restaurant in Old Saybrook, which was closed by damage from storms Irene and Sandy. The organizers were finally able to secure the yacht club for this year’s gathering on June 16. Dick Mather, one of the organizers of the reunion, said it was safe to say this would be their last class reunion.
Mather, Peggy Lieberman, and Judy Grover were the three organizers of this year’s reunion, but Grover said, “You’ve got to give him [Dick] a lot of the credit” as he was the main organizer and wrangler of classmates.
While the organizers work hard to put together these reunions, there were times where the retelling of memories continued even after the reunion had ended. After one of the last reunions that was held, the class went back to Betty Wells’ house where they talked for hours and hours, said Judy Grover.
“It was a special class,” said Mather. “We all were born in the year 1938, so most of us are 80 years old and that’s old. So, 62 is one thing, but 80 years [is another], so we’re celebrating two kind of occasions.”
Mather said it was difficult to track everyone down—it takes a lot of research, he said. Of the 80 who graduated, 19 are deceased. About 40 attended the reunion, and of those, 30 were classmates; the rest were spouses of classmates.
“We have almost half of the class from all over the country, minus all of us who aren’t here anymore,” said Mather.
Even the spouses who attended were very close with the graduates who attended Valley. As many of those in attendance had met their significant others in high school, there was a lot of overlap between neighboring towns and schools.
Bob and Dave Wyzkowski attended the reunion with their wives, Marilyn and Barbara, who were both able to tell stories of Valley as well as if they had attended themselves. Even the Wyzkowski brothers only attended Valley freshman and sophomore year before transferring to Hale Ray High School in East Haddam.
Daniel Connors, the class’s 7th grade teacher as well as their advisor, was with them through those years and attended the reunion.
“He was with us for a long time, forever,” said Mathers.
The class of ‘56 was a unique class because not only was it the first class to complete grade 9 through 12 at Valley, but they began their four years at Valley before the building was completed.
For that first year, Bob Wyzkowski said the class commuted from Deep River to Essex for morning classes, and then from Essex to Chester in the afternoon and that they did that for about a year until Valley was finished.
Between experiencing the adventure of a not-yet-completed school to attending field trips such as the one to Washington D.C., which consisted of almost 80 people, close to the entire class, according to Lieberman it would have been difficult not to form bonds as close as the ones seen at the reunion.
One classmate, Doug Dexter, even had his old school yearbook with him and was walking from classmate to classmate having them re-sign the pages.