Emily Paine Carter

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On a muggy June evening, folks clustered in a historical Salem building to celebrate the first "Reunion on Union," honoring North Cross School's Salem years.

About 50 total alumni, including this columnist, and guests crowded together at 12 Union St. -- now Joel Spencer's Olde Salem Furnishings.

Quizzical spouses had wondered: Why did our beloveds drag us hundreds of miles to these rooms where the air conditioning just conked out? Granted, North Cross boasted one of this area's first kindergartens, but what was so danged special about a school with K-through-third grade only? And 50 to 60 years ago! (No ages here; you do the math.)

Would that this space -- and my humble talents -- allowed me to wax as rhapsodic as alumna Anna Logan Lawson's 1999 Founders' Day address: a plumb-lyrical love letter to the place.

But how to describe magic?

Sure, legendary teacher/principal Margaret "Billy" Northcross Ellis -- she of imperial bearing, ringing her famous bar-of-four-bells -- was a stern disciplinarian. A spanking paddle was rumored, and I suspected a Marine handbook showcased her ramrod posture.

But these alumni glowed -- not just from the heat -- to recall again and again "such happy memories":

Our costumed Halloween parades down Main Street.

The sweetest teachers, especially the late Nelle Oakey Gardner and Betsy Darden Koontz, whose daughter Bev White was present at the reunion.

The death-defying playground equipment: super-long swings and that giant roulette wheel you had to run to jump onto.

Singing traditional songs: "Goober Peas," "Way Down Yonder in the Paw-paw Patch."

The Christmas pageant.

Our fabulous dance costumes and lessons by ever-lively Louise Hoback -- whose granddaughter Mary Hoback catered this event.

Art lessons by the renowned Harriett Stokes.

Friendly school secretary Dottie Stevens greeting us by the then-daunting staircase, and collecting our lunch-money coins. (All three NCS legends were present -- and looked marvelous.)

The Maypole dance and graduation!

Jane Bondurant, NCS director of alumni and family relations, e-mailed a history: patron May Butts (wife of Howard Butts) launched the school in her Langhorne Place basement in 1944, when the public school board wouldn't admit her two-weeks-too-young daughter, Cynthia, to the first grade. (The late Cynthia's brother Ed attended the reunion.)

In 1945, May Butts bought the late Judge Wingfield Griffin's Union Street house, and promised Margaret Northcross that if she would teach, the school would carry her name. The school remained in Salem until its 1961 merger with Roanoke's Eaton School; North Cross is now K-12 college preparatory on Colonial Avenue in Roanoke County.

On this night, current Headmaster Paul Stellato recognized these Salem roots, our 300-and-some Salem alumni, the teachers present and the reunion committee: Joseph D. Logan III, Pam Martin Ogden, Anne Nimmo Parrott, Susan Snead Light, new Board of Trustees Chairman Anne Lee Stevens -- Dottie's daughter -- and me.

Then we returned to our memories and memorabilia culled from closets and scrapbooks and shoeboxes: a kindergarten boy's dance slippers -- huge! My crinoline dancing slip. A first-year contract ($10 per month tuition). Photographs of so many happy, dear little faces. ...