http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20090626/LIFE/90625012/-1/SPORTS09
By STACI HUPP
shupp@dmreg.com
June 26, 2009
Iowa Falls, Ia. The kids who came of age when man landed on the
moon are packed for a trip home to 1969.
Ann Sullivan, the cheerleader, will bring a peasant skirt and a
flower for her white hair.
Steve Wikert, the wrestler, will have a photograph from Vietnam.
Lilli Lanser, the outcast, will bring a new sense of school spirit.
And new boobs.
Thurston Lamberson, the introvert, will finally have plenty to talk about.
Others will bring old crushes, emotional baggage and memories made
sweeter with time.
They are the Class of 1969, the largest ever at Iowa Falls High
School. The July Fourth weekend marks their 40-year reunion.
One of the most pivotal years of their lives overlapped with one of
most unforgettable periods in modern history. America was embroiled
in social and scientific change. The political idealism of the decade
was on the wane, battered by assassination and the cynicism it bred.
The bridge had been crossed from 1950s conformity, clean living and
unquestioned patriotism to rebellion, counterculture and distrust in
government.
The Class of '69, in Iowa Falls and across the country, stood at the
crossroads, and pondered which direction to take.
It was a year that saw the moon landing, Woodstock, the birth of
Earth Day and the dawn of America's gay rights movement. For the
Class of '69, it was a time their parents didn't understand and their
children envy.
"The '60s was the end of the era where you had to be real normal,"
said Lamberson, 58, a contractor who lives in Palmetto, Fla. "We were
starting to get our wings."
They went off to college, to war and to work. They became school
principals, farmers and accountants. Mothers and fathers. Grandparents.
Like every young generation, the Class of '69 thought it would live forever.
It took death to reunite them, 40 years later, in the same place they
parted ways: the old high school gymnasium.
They will trade photographs of grandchildren and swap stories that
have been retold a hundred times.
And they will plant the seeds of a legacy that will live long after
they're gone.
Sullivan, 58, a retired state prison worker from Coralville, will
dress for the occasion.
She doesn't feel 40 years older, but "I do have all the fat and
wrinkles to show for it," she says with a laugh.
--
Revolution seemed to be everywhere in 1969.
Just not in the halls at Iowa Falls High School.
Life magazine debated the morality of artificial insemination and
test-tube babies, but sex education had yet to find a place in the
quiet river town of 5,000.
The evening news showed body bags and war protests. At school,
Vietnam was a pink sliver on the map in government class.
Sly & the Family Stone's "Everyday People," a song about peace and
equality among races and social groups, topped the charts. In Iowa
Falls, exposure to other cultures was limited to textbooks and a
foreign exchange student from Afghanistan.
Tim Broer, who grew up on a farm, said he didn't see a black face,
let alone understand the depths of racial discrimination, until college.
"History books in the public school system at that time were biased,"
he said. "People thought it was not patriotic to put out your dirty
clothes on the clothesline."
Women's liberation was difficult to grasp for high school girls who
were forced to wear dresses and played no organized sports other than golf.
Sullivan wanted to be a history teacher, but "I was dissuaded from
doing history, because coaches taught history classes," she said.
"Looking back now, it was kind of frustrating for girls."
Like most small towns, Iowa Falls was idyllic to those who fit in;
isolating for those who didn't.
Lanser, the outcast, was sent home from school because her trendy
"granny dress" stood out in a sea of mini-skirts.
The principal Jerry Coe called it disruptive, she recalls.
Lanser, who said she didn't fit in with the girls, earned an
unflattering reputation because she befriended boys.
"We used to drive out into the country and drinknothing else," she
said. "I suffered from the gossip. I will never live in a small town."
Whatever Iowa Falls High School lacked in individualism, it made up
for in togetherness.
Homes went dark when the Friday night football lights came to life.
Letter jackets were a prized possession. Sullivan, the cheerleader,
remembers the thunder of feet on the gym floor at pep rallies.
"We had pride in our school," Anne Voge, a flute player who joined
Future Teachers of America, said.
--
Teachers left lifelong impressions on Iowa Falls' Class of '69.
Robert Hill, who sang in the high school choir, remembered his
instructor's words as he watched his granddaughter's middle-school
concert last month: "You can't sing with your mouth closed. Open up!"
The class also left its mark on teachers.
When rookie English teacher Lois Yocum she wasn't much older than
her students explained that poet Edgar Allan Poe studied abroad,
"the boys all laughed," she said.
But there were also moments of maturity.
After they read Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau to learn
about transcendentalism, Yocum's students talked about ways they had
altered their routines for the sake of the environment.
"They were very tolerant of my first-year teacher's mistakes and
helped me make the transition from college student to full-time
teacher," Yocum said.
Like high school seniors in any era, the Iowa Falls students
maneuvered between their parents outdated mores and a growing sense
of individuality.
What made them different from Mom and Dad was that pink sliver on the map.
Many viewed the Vietnam War as an opportunity to serve the country,
Yocum said, "but one that also evoked fear."
The fear intensified as graduation inched closer.
Wikert, the wrestler, recalls the Marines who stood at the door of a
neighbor whose son would not be coming home.
"I remember going to the funeral like it happened yesterday the
21-gun salute," he said. "It gave me a whole different perspective on Vietnam."
Wikert, who couldn't afford to pay for college, enlisted in the Navy
to avoid the draft. He went to boot camp 10 days after graduation;
Vietnam a year later.
"I am glad I was innocent and somewhat unknowing of what the world
had to offer," he said. "I discovered all too quickly some negative
aspects of what the world had to offer."
Lamberson, the introvert, borrowed $500 from his girlfriend's father
to cover tuition at Ellsworth Junior College, a temporary haven in
case his number came up.
"More school was not my thing either," he admits. "I didn't know what
I wanted to be."
On a mid-summer night after graduation, the world seemed to change forever.
Lanser, the outcast, watched the moon landing in a motel room the
night before freshman orientation at the University of Missouri.
In 1970, war protests turned dangerous at the University of Iowa,
where Linda Pierce was a freshman. Her favorite professor was
arrested. The old armory annex burned down. Final exams were canceled.
Pierce's cousin would die in Vietnam the following June.
"That gives me goosebumps just now," Pierce said. "At that point, it
became very real to me."
--
The Class of '69 scattered like seeds across the U.S. map.
They went to California, Texas, Massachusetts. By some accounts,
almost half the 159 graduates left Iowa.
Close friends kept in touch, but the ties of high school loosened
with every new job, home and baby.
Then something happened: Graduates in Class of '69, the one that
would live forever, started to die.
June Chaplin, a pretty brunette, was the first in 1986. She was
stabbed to death by her husband in their Des Moines home, records
show. At least 13 other graduates have died.
The list includes Danny Kelly, a decorated Vietnam veteran, and
Charles Clemmons, who'd announced in class that he'd be the first man
on the moon.
It was the class president's death in 2005 that shook even the most
indifferent classmates. Wade Nelson, who died of cancer, was viewed
as the glue that held the rest together.
"You're kind of taken aback a bit when someone like that disappears
without ever having really gotten to know the guy," Lamberson, the
introvert, said.
Lanser, the outcast, collected addresses and e-mails for her former
classmates. All but nine were accounted for.
Hill, the choir singer, built a Web site. Lamberson, the introvert,
and Pierce pitched in.
The site led to a newsletter. The newsletter led to the 40th class reunion.
Organizers weren't close in high school. They are now.
"I felt a lot of trepidation going back to my last reunion," Lanser
said. "This reunion, I have friends."
Those who prefer to leave high school in the past won't be there.
Broer, the Iowa Falls farmer, is one of them.
"I'm not much for dancing and golfing," he said. "I guess I don't
feel bad about it."
Those who come will do more than dance and golf.
Classmates will share dinner Friday in the old gymnasium, where they
had pep rallies, proms and graduation four decades ago.
On Saturday, they will plant trees for their dead classmates at a
nature center near Iowa Falls. Organizers hope to raise enough money
so that all 159 will have a tree someday.
"There's way too many things in this old life that have way too much
significance added to them," Lamberson said. "But a tree's a living thing."
The Class of '69 will rediscover their hometown on a walking tour and
a cruise along the Iowa River.
They will find a small town with enough industrial muscle to survive
the decline of family farms, which has sucked the life out of others.
They will see a biodiesel plant, a renovated opera house, a new
library and an old library that was converted into an art gallery.
They also will find a small town that is not small-minded, said Voge,
the graduate who came back to teach at her alma mater.
"It's been a great place to raise children, it's been a great place
to work and it's a very progressive small town," she said.
Movie posters will help turn back the clock. So will Sullivan and
others who plan to show up in vintage clothes.
Classmates will talk about how the world has changed: An unpopular
war. Climate change. Gay marriage. The nation's first black president.
They will talk about how each other has changed, too: A little less
on top. A little too much in the middle. In Lanser's case, a little
more out front.
Some will no doubt complain that booze is off limits and the building
still lacks air-conditioning.
Even after 40 years, some things never change.
--
Click to go back to main 1969 project page
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/1969
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