Dear Class of 66,

I am excited to see all of you who are attending the reunion activities this weekend!  Paula and Woody have done a wonderful job over the past year and a half leading the committees in creating a great opportunity for us to re-connect and visit.

Since many members will not attend and since I don’t want to interrupt all the visiting everyone will be doing Saturday night at the dinner and dance, I will share a few of my thoughts and reflections as we celebrate our 50^th year since graduating from Needham Broughton High School.

We were a great class!  On the final day of our senior year, I remember thinking how lucky we were to have been through school together at that time in our lives and in history.  Each of us, in a variety of different ways, became the fabric of our experiences as we walked the halls, sat in classes, participated in school activities, and move through the three years at Broughton to launch us into our first steps of adulthood. 

Growing up together as we did those three years bred a closeness, a knowledge of each other, that is hard to replicate.  Not that we knew all that each of us would become as adults, but we did know each other in a slice of time in our lives where many of the parts were just forming and a lot of the “raw material” of who we would become had not fully made it to the surface. 

So when we re-connect at the reunion or through the wonderful Class of 66 website, we come back together knowing each other in some special ways gained only through our time together at Broughton.  Just as important, we come back together to find out what we didn’t and couldn’t know about each other that has played out in our lives over the past 50 years.  For me, the great thing about our reunion, whether at this weekend’s activities or through the class website, is that we get to find out the parts we didn’t know about each other as well as to re-connect in ways we did know. 

Finally, as we re-connect, I think we all come back with a greater respect and appreciation of one another.  Life is the great equalizer.  We have all had joys and successes and we have all had to weather the significant challenges life presents.  Some of our members did not live this far.  We are fortunate to be here.  I think we come back together with a deeper respect for one another out of our own life experiences as they enlighten our memories of those formative years together.

I can’t wait to see everyone this weekend.  For all connected to the website, whether or not you will make the reunion, please provide more information about yourselves, your lives, and where you are now.  I think many are hesitant to put more than minimal information on the site.  It is great to discover what has transpired with each of you since 1966.  Everyone has a story and we have a unique perspective from which to share our stories.  Please keep using the site to stay connected and to share your story.  Thanks.

Jim Fontaine

Class of 1966