In the past 10 days, I have attended a couple of reunions. One was an annual get-together and I crashed my older brother Bruce’s 50th class reunion.

The annual reunion was again at Hadlock Field to watch the Portland Sea Dogs with my college dorm mates. We have done this about six or seven years – of course, we missed a year during the pandemic. This year, only seven of us managed to get to the game but the lasting friendships and gathering always prompt fun memories and stories of our shenanigans as residents of 3 North Gannett Hall at the University of Maine. Thanks to room 307 resident John Hunter of New Hampshire, formerly of Lexington, Massachusetts, the reunion was born because we hadn’t connected with some of our friends for many, many years. It was the late 1970s when we all went to UMO together. It is always a good time and hopefully more of our friends will return in 2023.

The Boothbay Region High School Class of 1972 reunion at Brady’s restaurant was a lot of fun as well. I was a freshman at BRHS when these now men and women were seniors. However, because of my brother being in the class, I felt a kinship with some as we roamed the neighborhoods as youngsters and played on the track, football and basketball teams together in high school. Plus, many of the classmates, like myself, stuck around to live and work in the region and we have become good friends and acquaintances over the many years.

There were several people, also, that I wanted to see as I hadn’t seen them in 50 years – or more, as some in attendance only went to grammar school with the BRHS graduates. It was nice to catch up, even if it was a brief discussion during the beehive of activity at the restaurant.

Thanks to my good friend and reunion organizer, Sandra Perkins, for allowing me to crash the party!

Longtime friendships are the best in my book.