The Class Of ‘57: The Beach High Kids

By Joan E. Gilbert Childs

PART I

Graduation from Beach High was barely a memory in March of 2006. After all, nearly fifty years is a very long time. As the years passed with fluidity and without conscious awareness since graduation, so did our own personal years, as we became college graduates, service men and women, moms, dads, active members of the working force and now, grandparents.

President Eisenhower seemed like ancient history; Khrushchev and Stalin faded into the history books to join the likes of Adolph Hitler and Mussolini. We witnessed the assassination of President Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, and Martin Luther King. We watched Cuba become a Communist country and stared in awe, as the missiles were dismantled only 90 miles from our beaches. We observed Apartheid as it became truly identified and challenged for the first time in American history. As high school students, we observed the signs on the city buses, “Colored in the back of the bus.” We lived in silence without a defined social consciousness, witnessing segregated schools, bathrooms, restaurants, and even water fountains. 

We were anguished over the loss of tens of thousands of our young men and women fighting a war in a country that none of us had even heard of. We advanced from the Victorian Age into the Age of Liberation to the New Age, the Dot Com Age, Civil Rights, space travel, computers, cell phones, iPods, global warming, and terrorism. We witnessed the deaths of Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, Princess Grace, John Lennon, and Princess Diana. We mourned the loss of The Lone Ranger, Tarzan (Johnny Weissmuller), Abbot and Costello, Roy Rogers, Uncle Miltie, Jackie Gleason, and Ed Sullivan, not to mention countless others that we thought would live forever. And then—we witnessed the unforgettable; the Twin Towers crumble into rubble amidst the fumes and clouds of all our naiveté, vulnerability and incomprehension. All in all, despite these major events, genetic engineering, cloning, the homeless, Aids, Jihad, and Prozac, we moved forward with our passions to become the people we were intended to be.

We met sometime in March 2006. We gathered in an expansive living room high atop a condominium overlooking Biscayne Bay. This was to be the first of a series of committee meetings that would create the 50th high school class reunion. There were only a few when I arrived, followed by others who drifted in one at a time, totaling fifteen. We gathered together in a circle around a large glass cocktail table, staring at each other with a plethora of emotions. Had we really become old and not known it? We had the same familiar faces, but there were signs of wear and tear and the elements of time gone by. Although aware of my own aging and touch-ups over the years, I suddenly realized how time had transformed us when I sat face-to-face with my classmates. As we shared our purpose and goals, the meeting shifted unwittingly into 1957. The conversation drifted into names, places, teachers, songs, movies, and dances of our time. We regressed into a time warp and once again became seventeen years old for three hours but with the experience and knowledge of nearly a lifetime.

A year and a half had passed. We were two months away from the event. The time from that first meeting evolved into more than any of us could imagine. The website created by one of our talented classmates generated communication and information that was endless and even relentless. We negotiated our ideas and thoughts by email almost on a daily basis. Rarely were we in disagreement except with perhaps the professional party planners who were born a quarter of a century after we graduated. The resistance from many of our classmates to attend due to old wounds became a mission of conversion by those on the committee. Old feelings of anger and hurt surfaced through emails that were responded to by many of us with concern, sadness and appreciation. Some were resolved; others accepted with sorrow.

Having been in the practice of psychotherapy, I was aware that old wounds often become part of the fabric of our core and who we become. However, many of our committee members were stunned to learn that so many of our classmates had taken the social, moral, and emotional injustices and injuries from their formative years and teens into adulthood. So many carried their pain so that attending such an auspicious occasion was incomprehensible to them. What became even more alarming were the deaths, illnesses, and losses that occurred during the years that we had each gone our own way. Time had not been altogether friendly. Aging had a host of problems. Reflections and self-examination became pervasive for all of us. Looking back through a rear-view mirror gave us a glance of what was really important. Philosophical issues emerged. Had we been a microcosm of the universe blending our individuality into a greater sum? Had we, the “Beach Kids” really been so much different than the rest of the nation’s high schools in the 50’s? Had our uniqueness been a figment of our imagination or a skewed perception in the filters of our minds?

As our event approached, we realized that, indeed, we were special and shared a collective pride and joy that we had brought a legacy of the 50’s, filled with the values of our time, into our present lives. We realized we, as the class of ’57, had made remarkable contributions to society and mankind that would remain indelible. And now the common denominator that connected our humanism and finiteness was the recognition that we were the “seniors” once again, but this time, the “senior citizens” of Beach High. This was our tacit and shared communication that sifted through the thought processes while we were deciding the menu, the band, the centerpieces, and the budget.

We were the lucky ones who survived the trials and tribulations of the years and their effects. We were the blessed who have navigated safely through time, turmoil and triumph with a sense of humility and gratitude. We made our mistakes and poor choices at one time or another. We have learned from the past and look to the future with the same grit that we had when we graduated, but with a knowledge that only time and experience can offer. Our youth and impatience transcended into wisdom and tolerance. We’re able to meet challenges with a better understanding and acceptance that things may not go the way we wish. We’ve learned that things happen sometimes the way they are intended and not always the way we would like. We’ve learned that our destiny sometimes transcends our will. We have learned how to forgive others as well as ourselves. We are learning to accept our lot in life and give back to the next generation, so that they can reap what we offer. But most of all, a deep bond with one another has been re-established, cemented with love and respect, and we looked forward to our 50th high school reunion with excitement and appreciation to be the Beach High graduates of the class of ’57!

PART II

Seventeen years later we have already celebrated our 60th and 65th high school reunions and our 80th birthday party. Time seems like toilet paper. The closer we get to the end of the roll, the faster it seems to go. Many of our classmates have passed. Those of us still living our lives, either in sickness or health are 84 years old or have already reached the ripe old age of 85. Many are widows; some are widowers. Most are grandparents, and few are even great-grandparents. As we look back in our rear-view mirrors once more, we realize just how lucky we Beach Kids were. We lived in the best of times and in one of the best cities in the world. It truly was the last age of innocence.

Those of us who are still alive have maintained relationships that have survived throughout the years. We still enjoy getting together to celebrate our memories and share our ills and joys. We went from fax machines to downloading, scanning, streaming, bitcoins, and now AI. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World we read in English class is here and now. Beach High was the foundation of who we are today. Whether we sat in the band room with Mr. Coleman waving his baton to the Egmont Overture, played basketball in the gym, football in Flamingo Park, hung out at Dolly’s or spent every Saturday morning in Temple Emanuel mesmerized or bored with the refrains of Rabbi Lehrman, hung out in the front of Liggett’s drug store on the corner of Washington Avenue and Lincoln Road, we, the octogenarians are proud and grateful for the legacies that Beach High granted us.

Band Room

Gym