Newspaper articles
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The following was printed in the Fincastle Herald August 6, 2008: The Class of '88 - 20 years later |
| It was a hot and humid June evening in 1988. The excitement in the air was fantastic. No more high school. The LBHS Class of 1988. We were outta there! Our whole life was ahead of us. At least right after that amazing senior week at Myrtle Beach. Well, here we are 20 years later. I have gone from being a fresh LB graduate in the summer of 1988 to being the parent of an upcoming junior and freshman at LB and two preschoolers in the summer of 2008. I am anticipating the simple, long awaited reunion our graduating class will be having in September. In all these years, we have never had one. It has been, and still is, quite the task to locate our alumni. We established a website, www.lordbotetourtclassof88.com, to help in the process and give us opportunities to reconnect. We are finding out just how far away many of our classmates moved. It is interesting to see where everyone is and what they are doing with their lives. We are discovering how many childhood friends are fighting illness, how many we have lost and how many friends have lost children of their own. We are renewing friendships and providing support for one another. It is intriguing to learn how all these kids of the 80’s have come full circle in life and look forward to “coming home” to Botetourt for our reunion. I will be the first to admit that I loved the ‘80s. The music, the hair, the clothes. Okay, looking back now the hair and the clothes were a bit ridiculous. Our generation alone could take full responsibility for killing the ozone with all the hairspray it took to hold up those bangs. And what were we thinking when we pulled on parachute pants?! But the music? Now that was something. It rocked! Bon Jovi, Motley Crue, U2, Guns and Roses, Chicago; and even Michael Jackson was still pretty cool back then. Who could have imagined how quickly it would all fly by? So many things are different now, and so many the same. For starters, just looking around Botetourt County, it amazes me how much growth has taken place. I can remember when a group of us would get together and play “hide and seek” in the apple orchards that now are the home to the subdivision Wetherwood. And back before the mouth-watering cuisine of Rancho Viejo, we had ice cream sundaes at HoJo’s (Howard Johnson’s). There was no BAC or Ashley Plantation, no Read Mountain Swim Club. Our choice for swimming was Tinkerview Swim Club, which now is a leveled gravel lot; or Traveltown public pool, which had the big slide, several diving boards and the rings across the middle. It had even survived the Flood of ‘85. There are still the Botetourt Country Club, Limestone Park, Rainbow Forest Lake and the many swimming “holes” along our creeks and the James River. Winn-Dixie parking lot was the “busy” spot on Friday and Saturday nights. I am reminded of that when I see teens meeting up in the Kroger parking lot nowadays. We would meet up at Winn Dixie to decide where we would go hang out the rest of the evening. Since our options were limited to pretty much just field parties in our county, we usually ended up in Roanoke, maybe at a movie. For about $3.50 a ticket we could catch "Die Hard" or "Cocktail" that summer. Or maybe we would be out cruising Williamson Road. Gas averaged 91cents a gallon. That is something I definitely miss. We stayed on the phone for hours, irritating our parents while we stretched out that long cord to find the most private spot. Some luckier teens had cordless phones. We had no cell phones, no texting and no internet. How did we ever make it? We were being introduced to a whole new world of video games, but nothing like X-Box Live or Wii. Mike Tyson was in the news for one incident after another, n ot much different than Brittney Spears today. Aside from changes in American culture, growth in the county, technology and the price of gas, we were pretty much like every other generation’s graduates…we knew it all, and we were going to change the world by doing things completely different than our parents did. We were strong and healthy; smart and innovative; our options were unlimited! I will be curious to see if now, 20 years later, we are still so confident. Or was it cocky? Or maybe just young? I wonder how many of my fellow classmates have to get their kids to show them how use their cell phones? Do they play Wii games? Or just Wii Fit? Do they think the music our kids listen to is horrible? And what about their clothes? And hair? We would have NEVER listened to that, talked like that, wore that outfit. What is this world coming to? What on earth happened in the last 20 years? Oh yeah, we did. I hope that most of my alumni have figured out, like many of us have, that life is precious and very often, too short. I hope they have discovered that our parents knew a lot more than we ever gave them credit for, and in spite of trying not to, we probably bring a great deal of their parenting into our own. I hope they have discovered that high school was certainly not the end all of everything and life has so much more to offer in each new day. I hope that each and every one of them, in some small way, has made a difference. Maybe not saving the world or curing cancer, but making a difference somehow to someone. Because truly, that is what really matters. I have great faith that come September, I won’t be disappointed. After all, we survived being teens in the ‘80s. We can do anything! |
The following was printed in the Fincastle Herald on Oct. 1, 2008:
