Norton school, at 50th, ages well

They threw her a 50th anniversary celebration last week. She was so special that we were told to come stay for three days. The birthday committee also asked us to share memories of our time with her, no matter how short that time was. For many of us who had known her when she was young, we had to go back a long way to conjure of what she had meant to us.

It was the easiest assignment that ever emanated from her. That’s because the honoree who turns 50 this year is a school. Every class from 1954 to the present was invited to come home to John I. Burton High School.

More than 700 did, filling up the small town of Norton, located in the coalfields in Virginia’s southwest corner. Former students came from afar: Nevada, Illinois, Texas, Indiana, Georgia, Mississippi, the Carolinas and Maryland. They came from nearby: Roanoke, Abingdon and Bristol. One of the first questions we asked each other when we met again was “Where do you live?”

“I got as far away as Pound,” said Millie, one of many who didn’t stray too far. They are the ones on whom the brunt of the responsibility for the mega-party fell. People like Stan Wilson, whose love for the school has kept him there for 40 years, as a student and star basketball player, a teacher and coach, a principal and assistant principal. Two out-of-staters who wanted to do their part to prod the five decades of graduates to come back to the place that helped forge their identities were Georgians Hank Horseman who wrote letters and Bill Culbertson who sent e-mails.

Joining all were Norton officials who supported the grand finale, the birthday party on Saturday when they shut down a street, filling it with tents to protect the overflow crowd from this spring’s incessant rain that miraculously failed to arrive.

They also gussied up the wide main street that looks prosperous -- no boarded up storefronts and crumbling curbs -- at a time when small towns around the region are taking an economic beating.

The fact that it wasn’t about us, it was about the school, alleviated vanity’s pressure. Few minded showing up with added pounds and accumulated wrinkles. Also, what we had done with our lives since we left high school wasn’t important. The accomplishments were important, not because of us, but because of the teaching that had gone on in that school. The gala was to give the school credit for turning out men and women who went on to become authors, teachers, dentists, doctors, nurses, software engineers, actors, salespeople, railroad workers, managers, scientists, accountants, coal miners and soldiers. Some were still in college or just beginning their careers.

The largest group of returning graduates was the one that had been gone the longest, more than 30 years. It was amazing that almost half of my class of 52 was present. Since many of us had last seen each other, much had happened: the first moonwalk, Vietnam, JFK’s assassination, the fall of the Iron Curtain, women’s lib, cellular phones, the Internet, DVDs, moon roofs, 10 U.S. presidents.

And 9-11. It came up in many conversations that lasted more than 10 minutes. “I told my students that it was a day they would always remember for their lives would never be the same again,” said Pedie, a retired manager and now a substitute teacher. Bill lost a friend who was on the second plane that crashed into a World Trade Center tower.

The birthday celebration gave some courage to acknowledge feelings and actions they didn’t dare reveal as vulnerable teens. “I learned that the girl I always had a crush on had one on me too,” lamented one graying man. Someone else confessed to typing a football player’s typing-class assignments so that he could stay eligible for the sport. One man thanked a former classmate by saying, “I wouldn’t have graduated if you hadn’t helped me.” I looked for my favorite teacher to tell her that I appreciated her influence and to thank her for not making me feel stupid when I was struggling to diagram a compound-complex sentence on the blackboard.

Rolling back the years and finding friends again might not have happened on such a scale if the spotlight had been on us. Attention went to the school that helped to mold our characters and solidify our futures. That somehow made it essential for us to come show our faces.

Those faces were the reasons that organizers made us wear nametags: time had made sure that we didn’t look like teenagers anymore. That reality didn’t keep us from taking pictures though. Laughter renewed our bond as someone yelled, “Hurry up and snap that thing. We can’t hold our stomachs in much longer!”

The birthday building didn’t have anything to worry about though. It had aged well and in the words of just about everyone “looked better than it ever had.”