"Thoughts"..................... by Harvery C. Jewett, IV

A bit of time has passed since the CHS Class of ’66 had its' 50th reunion and I find myself still thinking about it. I find myself re-energized and reinforced in the pride I have in Aberdeen and the precious friends I have here, particularly the “old friends” from high school. This past summer, I attended two 50 year reunions. In many ways those reunions were very different but, with the passage of a little time, I think very much the same. I have always greatly appreciated the invitations to the Aberdeen CHS Class of ’66 reunions. As you may know, while I was born and raised in Aberdeen, I did not attend Central but attended an all men’s Jesuit boarding school that my father, his father and brother had attended. I was away at boarding school from just after 8th grade at Monroe until graduation in ’66.

It was a very different place with classes six days a week in a very competitive academic environment with students from Canada, Mexico, Great Britain, Saudi Arabia, and Spain, as well as about half the States. We all knew that we would graduate, go our separate ways and see very little of each other in the future. That has all been true, although virtually everyone living returns for the reunions. I still have people who are great friends even though I talk to them infrequently and see them (with two exceptions) only at reunions. The same groups gather, their personalities seem unchanged, and their interests and politics are about the same. Even people like George Wendt (Norm on Cheers) seems just like the people they were in the nightly 10:30 p.m. poker games those 50 plus years ago. The friendships pick right up again.

I did not expect to have these boarding school classmates as my closest friends for life and they really are not. I always expected to return to South Dakota and probably Aberdeen. I always regarded my Aberdeen friends as my “real friends”, for lack of a better term. I attended college in South Dakota with my Aberdeen friends. I lived my entire life in Aberdeen except for later education, a short stint with the U.S. Courts after law school, and a shorter stint with the U.S. Army.

To a very large degree, my closest friends are today those who were my friends or whom I knew in high school or college in S.D. They have really influenced my life to a significant degree. Although I had a Jesuit professor/advisor in high school who had a defining influence in my life and a few professors in undergraduate school and law school who had a positive impact on me, the majority of the people who have influenced my life, (aside from my wife), are the friends I made in Aberdeen and South Dakota. 

At the CHS 50th reunion, it took about one minute to feel right at home with friends from the past. One close friend traveled to Calgary, Canada with me one summer and I had not laid eyes him on since 1966. The same old stories were just as funny, sad stories just as sad, and old victories and losses just as wonderful or pathetic. The women had definitely weathered the storm of age much better than the men! The women had the same terrific smiles as I remember. Alice Disbrow and Ella McDowell looked wonderful but Diz and John maybe … not so much! People were comfortable with themselves and others. It wasn’t just the women this time who were showing pictures of children and grand-children. Even grandpas brag! It was overwhelmingly warm, friendly and comfortable, and frankly reminded me of the price I paid to attend a boarding school away from my hometown.
When I think about those four years at my actual high school, I really recall the intense academic challenge as well as life in the dorms. Friday nights were just another “school night”. School days began at 7:00 a.m. The school had only one dance a year which was for graduating Seniors only. Two special friends traveled to Wisconsin from Aberdeen for my only school dance in those four years. Friends there played a part but were not the focus of my memories.

When I think about high school times in Aberdeen, I really think only about my friends. I did not attend the prom, did not attend the state basketball tournaments, did not cheer at the old football field or basketball arena. I did not participate in school activities. My memory is about going to small towns to listen to bands, drinking beer in the country or at the Starlite, driving up and down Main Street (again drinking beer). My memories are about going to Mina and Richmond Lakes (and again drinking beer), dances at the Y, friends won and lost, loves won and lost, and the real pain of getting on the 2:30 a.m. train to Minneapolis to start school in August. I left my life in Aberdeen behind until December and then got on that train again in January, returning home in June.

At both reunions, I was struck by the number who had passed away and touched by those who died in Vietnam serving our country. Vietnam seems to define people of our age but I did not feel that intensity at these reunions, even though many from both schools had served and some died.

This is a time of great change in my life. I have spent my working life practicing law, operating businesses, and serving on boards of directors, trustees, and the South Dakota Board of Regents and always traveling for work. In June of 2017, I will be “of counsel” in the law firm, not actively involved in the day to day operations of a business, and retired from virtually all boards or entities including, after 21 years, the South Dakota Board of Regents. Business travel will virtually cease. This whole experience has lead me to serious bouts of introspection. I have developed a different perspective on things that I had not thought about for many years. In reflection, there are some events and experiences from my life that I would have done differently. I need to take some people to coffee and apologize for things I said, did, or did not do.

What a varied group in Aberdeen who have lived, worked and raised families all over the country and the world! I have never wavered in being proud of Aberdeen, the place where I was born and raised, lived my life, and met the people from the CHS Class of ’66 whom I have the privilege to call my friends.

This Is What -40°F Feels Like

Erin Gloria Ryan

Thanks to Canada failing to sufficiently warm up a big blanket of freezing air descending southward from the Arctic, for much of the lower 48 states, the next couple of days are going to be colder than Jack Frost's rear end. Some of the forecasted wind chills are so cold they're almost unfathomable — unless

you grew up in them.

A POLAR VORTEX, as Bond villain cartoonish as it sounds, is a real meteorological term for a long-lasting, large-scale arctic cyclone that just sits over a particular area of the earth's surface and freezes the crap out of everything. The one we're currently experiencing over much of mainland America has led to wind chills of -50 and -60 degrees Fahrenheit over the Great Plains, the Dakotas, and my old stomping grounds of the greater Twin Cities area for at least the next couple of days. In Chicago, they're already sitting at double digits below zero, with wind chills south of -40. My mother, a school

administrator in northern Wisconsin, was just last week texting me that she personally went from classroom to classroom to poke her head in and tauntingly tell the kids that she's not canceling school so they should PREPARE TO BUNDLE UP has even caved and called off class. Here in New York City, the high today is 55. Tomorrow's high is 14.

It's really damn cold. How damn cold? Let me coldsplain it to you, from someone who grew up in a place so cold that I consider myself a bit of a cold sommelier.

15 to 30 °F

Everyone's been in this temperature. It's too cold to not wear a hat and be comfortable, but you can make do going gloveless if you have warm enough pockets. Cute jackets still work. If you walk briskly enough, it's not that bad. You can wear skirts in this weather if you wear tough enough tights. Don't be a wimp. It's fine.

0 to 15°F

This is where shit starts to Get Real. Light, flimsy coats won't cut it; the only way you'll be comfortable in this temperature is in a puffer coat or Thinsulate. You'll need gloves — and not the cheap kind you buy in a 6 pack from H&M, those gloves in 8 degrees will just make your fingers feel like individual frozen hotdogs affixed to your palm, incapable of movement. Long underwear helps. Don't try to go on a run in this weather. It's just too cold.

-15 to 0°F

You can feel your scalp through your hat and probably should cover your face. Cheeks become immediately reddened, any exposed skin on the neck or ears is incredibly uncomfortable. A long jacket is preferable to a short one, as it helps provide butt coverage. The best jackets for this weather are the ones that make the wearers look like they're wearing a sleeping bag, or like the opium-addicted caterpillar from Alice In Wonderland. Over Christmas, temperatures in my hometown were around -10 most of the time, and my boyfriend reported that after being outside for about 10 minutes, his beard started to freeze.

From the inside, you can feel how cold it is outside, even if you have your thermostat cranked all the way up.

-30 to -15 °F

This is what I always referred to as "mandatory doublepants weather" growing up, as it requires anyone who wants to venture into it to wear... uh... double pants (long underwear if you've got them, or sometimes I just wear leggings under jeans). This is the sort of cold that cuts through denim like it's jersey, that finds its way up untethered sleeves, that seeps through insulation and creates a layer of freezer burn under doors.

It's so cold at this temperature that if you boil a pot of water, take it outside, and toss it into the air, it will freeze and turns into ice crystals before it hits the ground.

You can feel your eyelid skin start to freeze when you go outside and if you go without a scarf over your nose and mouth, your boogers will freeze. (Try it! It's so gross!) You should not be going outside. The best glove strategy if you do have to go outside is to wear regular gloves UNDER oversized mittens.

-39 to -30 °F

Ibid on the above item, but at this point there air is so incapable of holding moisture that it zaps everything from exposed skin. This is The Long Winter-level despairing, hopeless cold. This is cold that paralyzes airports and closes down major highways. Once, when I was a kid, at the end of the school day on a Monday, the teacher went around handing out orange half slips of paper that we were to give to our parents. SCHOOL CANCELLED UNTIL THURSDAY, the note said, because it was legally too cold to require kids to go to school and since a lot of us lived in the country, the school didn't want any students turning into kidsicles while waiting for the bus. They ended up canceling school for the entire week, but it was so cold that we couldn't even go outside and play.

-40 °F

Normally, when a human being with a normal respiratory system breathes, the

air first enters their mouth and nose, then proceeds past the larynx and trachea and into the large airways in the lungs, where the air branches off into smaller and smaller tubes until it reaches the alveoli, small air sacs where air meets blood and trades oxygen for carbon dioxide. In normal temperatures fit for human habitation, by the time the air passes through the bronchioles and into the alveoli, it's usually warm enough that you don't feel like you're getting stabbed in the blood cells by icicles. Not in 40 degrees below zero. At this temperature, you feel the cold in your lung-tubes. You feel it in the air sacs. You feel it touching your blood. It's hard to take deep breaths of air this cold without reflexively coughing. It doesn't take long in this before any exposed tissue — including teeth and eyeballs — starts becoming painful. Yeah. The actual balls of your eyes. You'll feel them wince.

Wear all of your clothes at once. All of it. Dress like the garbage-person from Labyrinth. Put on six hats. Your boots can't help your toes, even with wool socks. You have wool socks, right? In this weather, shooties are suicide, and off-the-shoulder tops are idiotic. If you have to walk any distance outside, you will stop midway through the walk and think, "maybe I'll die before I get there." And you might. But don't worry — before you die of cold, you'll probably hallucinate first that you're very warm, and then you'll take off your clothes and be found naked and peaceful in a snowbank the next day.

Actually, come to think of it: 40 below zero is the perfect weather to spend all day inside watching Netflix.

Have a Merry Christmas — And Watch Terry Dance

It’s time to wish all of the Aberdeen Central Class of 1966 a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. 

And what better way to do that than with a Christmas rock ballad from the 1960s — and sung by The Chipmunks, with some performance dancing by the five Terry Rawsterns (TR's), kindergarten TR, 9th grade TR, high school TR, young adult TR (when he wore a moustache), and current TR who we now know as our class Digital Executive Officer. 

You didn’t know Terry could dance? Just watch – and smile. 

Have a great holiday season, wherever your travels may take you. It’s been a great year for the Class of 66, beginning with a terrific reunion and continuing with lots of shared stories, Facebook posts and funny videos. 

Merry Christmas 

Favorite Christmas Memories, Please Share......Carole Tonigan

The winter holiday season is upon us and it may trigger some memories of our seasonal holiday traditions during our childhood. So we want to have you get a little nostalgic and recall those early childhood years and your favorite memories or traditions, favorite gifts, toys or games, favorite meals, favorite outdoor activities, etc. that you enjoyed (or perhaps did NOT enjoy) during the holiday season.

Please join us in sharing your memories and traditions those years when life was simpler.

Carole Tonigan and Renee Milbandt 1966

 Carole Tonigan......My Dad had an old sleigh. He would use his old Ford tractor to pull it down Lincoln street, ringing a bell to call out our neighbors to join us. We had bales of hay to sit on, there was singing and laughing, etc. We also recall getting the Sears catalogue with the toy section and making our list for Santa. 

Cookies & Milk for Santa at Schreiner's

Tim Schreiner......While some families opened gifts on Christmas morning, our family had a strict Christmas Eve ritual that went along with opening gifts that night. We always had oyster stew for dinner (not a favorite among the younger members), after which the six Schreiner children all went upstairs to building anxiety and excitement while Santa visited our home. We always left out a glass of milk and two chocolate chip cookies for the great one.

Rawstern's Christmas Wrapping Paper from Sears

Terry Rawstern......My dad was the Receiving Manager of the Sears store in Aberdeen.  At the end of the Christmas season each year he would gather up all of the Christmas wrapping paper.  Rather than throwing it away, he brought it home and all of the presents wrapped under our tree the next Christmas were wrapped with the leftover Sears paper from the previous year. As I look back, this was a special tradition we had in our house.







Rory King......It was our first Christmas together.  Susie and I were poorer than church mice.  I was just starting the law practice, and it was slow--mostly criminal appointments.   Susie was still in college.  We lived in a small lake cabin at Richmond with one floor furnace and a fireplace to keep us warm.  We bought a four-foot reject of a Christmas tree with a bent spine and not many needles.  Susie made all of our ornaments out of hardened and painted bread dough.   Needless to say, our presents to one another were inexpensive and functional--I bought her a pair of shoes, and she bought me some slippers, if I recall. Straight out of O'Henry's "Gift of the Magi"!  But it was the best, most memorable Christmas ever.  We had each other.  And that was enough.

Susie & Rory Living Poorly

 

Cowboy Bob Couser

Bob Couser......My most memorable Christmas occurred in kindergarten at the Roosevelt school. I wanted a gun and holster badly. When I found wrapped gifts under the tree before Christmas, I carefully opened a gift with my name on it. I discovered that my mother did indeed get me my cowboy gun and holster. I carefully rewrapped it, placed it back under the tree, and pretended I was very surprised on Christmas day. 

Here's to Terry, the Man Behind This Blog and So Much More

Those of us behind the CHS Class of 1966 blog, newsletter, Facebook pages and YouTube channel want to take the time to call everyone's attention to all the time, talent, and energy our good friend Terry Rawstern has given to what we  call our "perpetual reunion" project.  

 

Terry has had a series of surgeries of late — nothing serious, although, at our age, any surgery can be serious — and we would ask you to keep him in your thoughts and prayers. 

 

Terry was, and is, the driving force behind our digital efforts. As something of a Digital Executive Officer, he keeps us busy working on new stories to keep the circle of communication going. 

 

In addition to his creative ideas for enhancing our communications, and making them interesting, Terry has made a number of excellent behind-the-scenes contributions to the blog and the newsletter. 

 

His technological and digital expertise has been invaluable. 

 

His feelings for his classmates, and for the city in which we grew up, are evident in all of his contributions.  

Terry Rawstern and his wife, Chris.

November Newsletter, We Weren't Perfect, Heartthrobs, Surviving Big 'C' and How To Talk Dakotan

CHS Class of 1966 November newsletter: View this email in your browser Hello Classmate Al Breaw's Memories of Playing with Heartthrob Bobby Vee One of the class of 1966's musicians spent time playing music with Bobby Vee, a 1960s heartthrob who recorded "Devil or Angel," "Poetry in Motion," "Rubber Ball," "Take Good Care of My Baby," and "The Night Has a Thousand Eyes." Vee got his start by filling in for Buddy Holly in Fargo on the night after Holly's plane crashed. Read Breaw's story about playing with Vee ... Surviving the Big "C" Many in the Class of 1966 have survived their head-on collisions with cancer. Unfortunately, some have not. But as all survivors and their families know, getting the word that you have made it to a cancer-free body is glorious news. Read Joy Schanil Schwann's story of her own win over cancer ... We Weren't Perfect: Shameful Memories Most of our memories of high school are probably pretty nice. But one classmate remembers the others who were bullied and sometimes abused. He asks us to stand up for those less fortunate than us. Read Paul Schneider's account of the other side of high school ... Burckhard's Bakery: A Sweet Institution And Its Sweet Namesake on Growing Up in Aberdeen There are a few institutions that we all remember from our days in high school. Then there are those institutions that we loved because they bring back sweet memories. And then there are those sweet institutions that had a direct connection to one of our classmates. Read Dawn Burckhard's story of Burckhard's Bakery ... The Inside Story of Liem's Sporting Goods Every boy's dream of sports greatness welled up whenever we walked through the door, smelled that leather, and saw the town's sporting greats swapping tales. As told by Harry Liem's grandson, David (Class of '66) ... Largest Hotel West of Mpls. The Sherman Hotel was the rock of a building that stood at the corner of Main Street and Third Avenue South. When we were in grade school, it was THE hotel in town. When we were in high school, it had been supplanted by the new Holiday Inn. By the time we got to college, we went there because the Sherman Bar was a pretty cool place, but the top of the building had been shaved off to make room for a parking garage. How To Talk South Dakotan When Alice Laird Rapport moved to Washington, DC, her co-workers had a good laugh when she said she was going down the block for a "pop." Alice wasn't headed out for a midday drink of alcohol, she was merely using the word that every South Dakotan knows means soda. Read Alice's primer on how to speak SoDakian... In case the trick-or-treaters in your neighborhood didn't scare you enough on Halloween, here's a frightening look at the digital wizards behind this newsletter. Join In With Your Story Most of the stories that appear in our blog and on Facebook come from you. This Class of '66 effort has been successful because of the variety of stories from you. We know you all have a story to tell the class, but might be reluctant or you think you don't write well. We encourage you to submit your stories for this newsletter. It's easy. Here's what you do: Simply write an email and send it to us at: aberdeenclassof66reunion@gmail.com. Include a photo if you have one, but it's not essential. We'll do the rest. Your note can be a simple, short paragraph or a long story, a question, an old photograph. Share a memory about something from our days together or share what is happening in your life. We just hope that you will join the effort to keep the newsletter going. Copyright © *|CURRENT_YEAR|* *|LIST:COMPANY|*, All rights reserved. *|IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE|* *|LIST:DESCRIPTION|* Our mailing address is: *|HTML:LIST_ADDRESS_HTML|* *|END:IF|* Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list *|IF:REWARDS|* *|HTML:REWARDS|* *|END:IF|*