Attention Attention Attention!!!

Dear 1962 GHHS Classmate,

I have received over 30 favorable responses from fellow classmates for having our reunion at the Holiday Inn in Independence on Saturday September 10th.   One reason the location was really liked is because of it’s proximity to Garfield Heights and where the old high school use to be. Another reason that the Holiday Inn is liked as a place for our reunion is that it has rooms available for an overnight stay at $109.

I can arrange for a tour of the new high school Saturday afternoon if any alumni would like to see it.  Our gathering at the Holiday can start at 5:00 with plenty of time for socializing.  Perhaps we could spend some time letting everyone share their experiences since graduation.  We can take photos to e-mail out later.  I will have photos of the 20th, 40th, 50th, and 55th anniversary reunions.

Dinner can start at 6:30.  We will have a dinner buffet that includes dinner rolls, coffee, tea, iced tea, and garden salad with choice of dressing.  You have a choice of three entrees:  Chicken Portobello or Bourbon Glazed London Broil or Baked Orange Roughy.  You will also have a choice of two accompaniments: Parsley Buttered Yukon Gold Potatoes or Penne Pasta with Vodka Sauce.   The cost for the dinner buffet is $48.00 per person including tax and gratuity.  There will be a cash bar with a bar tender.   

There will be a dance floor and I will bring a great sound system to play music from the 60’S.  We will play music from Billy Vaughn, Percy Faith, Johnny Mathis, Johnny Rivers, Beach Boys, Chantays Pipeline, Ray Charles, Roy Orbison, Tom Jones, Righteous Brothers, Beatles, and many more from the sixties and seventies.  I will post a large list of songs for requests.  We will have the reunion room until at least midnight.

I will set up a table for the two free DVD’s of the 2002 old high school tour and its sad demolition in 2004.  I will have free bricks from the old building for anyone that wants one. 

On Sunday we can venture down to the Cleveland Flats to spend an enjoyable lunch at Shooters.  Dan Aiken suggested Shooters for our reunion.  You can see from this photo that the river, boats, and bridges are all viewable from inside and outside of Shooters.

Please e-mail or call me to confirm your intent to join us at the Holiday on Saturday September 10th. Please provide your latest e-mail address and phone number.   Please send a check in the amount of $48.00 for each attendee and I will e-mail a receipt to you. 

Here is a list of those classmates who have signed on so far.

 

 

 

Go Bulldogs!

 

Home Room

Photo courtesy of Jim Butvin - Head Custodian GHHS

Garfield Heights High School
4900 Turney Road
Garfield Heights, 25 Ohio

 

The old high school was built in 1927 before the depression. The auditorium was added in 1939 near the end of the depression. The new addition was completed in 1956 and housed the administration. It seems that everyone remembers the library, the boys' gymnasium, the girls" gymnasium, the auditorium and its balcony, the wrestling room under the stage, home economics, industrial arts, the little theater, art class, the principal's office, the band room, the track and football fields in back, and the long hallways in that building. That old building housed a lot of tradition and memories of when life was all first impressions.

All alumni of the class of 62 are entitled to receive one or more free bricks from the old high school building that were collected during its demolition in 2004. There are about 25 bricks available to alumni. Most of the bricks are from the gymnasium area. Just e-mail the webmaster by clicking on the Contact Webmaster button on the marquis to the left and provide your shipping address. We will send a brick to you free of charge. Here are photos of two of the bricks. The first brick is from the old gymnasium / theater area to the right of the photo. The second brick is from the newer addtiion to the left of the photo. If nothing else, you can use a brick as a door stop.

We also have two DVD video sets of walk throughs of the old High School in 2002 and 2004. Sadly there are also videos of the demolition on the second DVD. Again, just e-mail the webmaster and we will send out a set of DVD's free of charge.

We were the last high school class to graduate from the "old bastille." The world was different in 1962. We were different too. Garfield Heights was a fairly new suburb. You could walk safely down the length of Turney or Granger and your parents would not worry. We only had four channels on the TV but the network programs were better. To almost all of us, television was black and white. John Kennedy was President and Vietnam was a place that no one had heard of. John Glenn had just orbited the earth in February and we were going to the moon in this decade. Every year we looked forward to the latest styling and big engines on the cars from Detroit. Fins were in and helped to create a feeling of optimism that the future would be better than the present. Almost everyone still had their parents and it seemed they all had jobs. And the music, and the music.....it was fun music.

We also remember our teachers who somehow managed to put up with and educate all 351 of us. A list of their names can be found at the end of "The Way We Were." Most of them have to be gone now. We went on to other things and did not look back for a long time. Now it would be nice to talk to them as adults and share experiences with them. Just like our parents, they got a lot smarter as we grew older.

We will be adding a lot of photos and features as time goes on. So make sure that you refresh each page when you revisit this website so that you are looking at the website and not a cache page in your computer. Please let the webmaster know if you have any ideas to make this website more enjoyable for you.

Photos from the 2012 50th Anniversary Reunion have been added to this website. Go to the "Past Reunions" page from the marquis on the left of this page. Please let the webmaster know if you see any misspellings or any other goofs. (No, not in the photos!) Again special thanks to Mel and Sandi Brazie for making the 50th Anniversary Reunion such a great success. It would not have happened without them.

Finding fellow classmates is our greatest challenge. We are working on updating our list of classmates and you can see that list at the "Classmate Contact Information" page which is accessible from the marquis on the left of this page. You will need the User I.D. and password from the webmaster. In this age of cell phones and fewer land lines, finding fellow classmates is becoming more difficult. We need your help in finding fellow classmates phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and home addresses. So take a look at what we have so far and e-mail any additions or corrections to the webmaster. To e-mail the webmaster simply click on the "Contact Webmaster" button on the marquis to the left of this webpage.