This morning we visited the cemetery north of town where Doreen's parents are buried. She decorated the grave with some flowers and paid our respects.
We then did a drive around Cedar Falls to see what has changed. Doreen was born and raised here. I did not come to Cedar Falls until after my freshman year of high school in DeWitt. My father was promoted in the Iowa State Patrol from district 12 Lieutenant to Area C Captain hence the move. Cedar Falls is home of the University of Northern Iowa (UNI) where our oldest daughter Michelle and daughter-in-law Ashley both graduated with teaching degrees.
So the high school Doreen and I both graduated was called Price Laboratory School and later Northern University High School (NUHS). It was a unique school as it was part of the University of Northern Iowa and it was state-funded. To attend this school you had to live within a geographic area surrounding UNI, or one of your parents had to be employed by UNI. Doreen and I both lived within the radius. New teaching methods were tried there, hence the name "laboratory school". Students of UNI that were learning to be teachers were given the opportunity to observe classes and later were given opportunities to do their student teaching there.
Unfortunately the NUHS school building needed a lot of repairs so they decided to close and demolish it. All that is left is the field house. Where the main school building used to stand is now tennis courts.
Where our high school used to stand
The field house remains
So it is a little strange celebrating our 50th class reunion without a school! Our class was only about 70 students and we were a pretty tight class. Most of us have stayed in touch over the years but it still took months of sleuthing to find our classmates. People have dropped their home phones, physically moved and they have changed email addresses. I've spent the better part of a year scouring the Internet to refresh our class list. It's a labor of love, though as I always enjoy a challenge. So out of a class of 70, 13 are deceased. Of the 57 living, we were able to contact 49 and we were unable to find or did not get any response back from 8. That's not bad! So more about the reunion later and on with the drive about town!
Doreen's house, less than one block from school
My house, south of the University
One of the iconic locations in Cedar Falls near the university is "college hill", where there are pizza shops, bars and other stores of interest to college kids. College Hill still exists, but has changed along with everything else.
The UNI Dome is also a unique structure. When it was first built, it was a fabric dome suspended by air pressure. There were air interlocks in the doorways to prevent it from deflating. I assume that has not changed.
We drove by the "towers", a pair of high rise dormitories between our high school and the university. I noticed Cedar Falls firefighters on the roof preparing to do some high angle rescue training or possibly reviewing the fire preplans.
We drove around many other areas of town and finished up at "Lookout Park", an elevated park that overlooked the Cedar River. Without going into a lot of detail, lets just say that Doreen and I spent a few beautiful evenings there in my 1969 Plymouth Roadrunner talking about everything under the sun!
Tonight at 1700 hrs was the first of two parts of our 50th class reunion. It was a meet and greet at Peppers which is a local restaurant/pub.
They gave us a balcony area inside the pub which worked very well.
The team that worked on reunion preparations.
We had 30 RSVP which included 25 classmates and 5 spouses or others and that is exactly what we had show up. A few pictures:
That's it for tonight. I'm done. More pictures tomorrow when we meet at the University for lunch and then at the Brown Bottle restaurant for dinner.
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