Neponset holds three important celebrations every spring-summer: Memorial Day, Neponset High School Alumni dinner, and Picnic Days, in that order.

Our Memorial Day service, conducted by American Legion Post 875 in the Neponset Village Park, was beautiful and moving. It always is. Participants were Commander Rodney Bennett, Chaplain Dick Wells, bagpiper Christopher Coomes, NGS student Rylee Blades, NGS principal Dena Hodge-Bates, and Tom Blake. Post volunteers decorated the impressive Avenue of Flags in the village cemetery and placed flags on the graves of deceased Neponset veterans, including those at the West Cemetery.

Picnic Days are coming this weekend with parades, races, old cars, pancake breakfast, pie contest and auction, Kewanee High School marching band—fun stuff.

Squeezed in between Memorial Day and Picnic Days is my favorite home-town festivity: the Annual Neponset High School Alumni Association dinner, partly because I taught there 27 years, but more so because I graduated from there in 1951. Saturday, June 6, we met at the Flemish-American Club for food, drink, and much schmoozing. “But,” you say, “didn’t the NHS breathe its last breath in 1999?” True, its final graduation ceremony occurred that year. But “last breath?” Uh-uh.

There’s something about our tiny school that won’t let go. Is it the fact that it provided a good, solid education? (The first year after NHS closed and students had their choice of attending either Kewanee or Wethersfield High, the valedictorians of both schools were from Neponset–Bill Bowen at Kewanee, Dave Currier at Wethersfield.)

Or was it because when you attend a small school, whether you want it to or not, it becomes another family. And you know how it is with family: you may not like everyone in it. It may be a relief the day you can go out on your own and “get away from it all.” Except—you never really do, do you? You never forget how it was.

The years go by. Life has a way of knocking off some rough edges. You and your school or blood mates experience triumphs and tragedies no one knew were waiting for you. You get together, you talk, and little by little, you connect. Religion, politics, race, social standing—important. Yet belonging to a unique group, a family—nothing compares to it. You are humans. At some level, you are all connected.

In the 1930s, a snazzy new diesel train, the California Zephyr, whizzed through Neponset, and NHS athletes became the Neponset Zephyrs. Each year the Alumni Association gives a small prize to the oldest female and male grads in attendance. This year it was white coffee mugs printed with the California Zephyr on them. Maurice Yepsen, Class of ’54 and I, class of ’51, won the prizes. (I beat out longtime friend Wink Golby Barry by a couple of months!) I’ve got all kinds of beautiful, funny, antique, or just plain ugly cups and mugs, but my morning coffee will taste even better in my new mug. Zephyrs forever!

Keep the faith! Your friend, Carol