Forty-nine years ago, I graduated from Nathan Hale High School. That was a great school, with excellent academics, talented teachers and some really sharp students.

I don’t know how many were in my graduating class but it was more than 800.

We had great sports teams. Football was a little off my senior year (I never played) but we almost played for the state title my sophomore year. That was the “game of the century” between Hale and Booker T. Washington High School. Actually, Rogers was our big rival back then. Both schools were very similar in size and demographics.

The Hale Marching Hundred band performed at games and they were terrific. School spirit was alive and well.

We put on great stage production for a high school arts department. I was cast in The King and I, a great musical that holds up today, and Shakespeare’s As You Like It. I didn’t have a singing role in the King and I but I played the prime minister of Siam. In As You Like It, I was “Charles the Wrestler” and “Sir Oliver Martext.”

Charles was a professional wrestler and I had a stage fight with the character Orlando, played by Walker Hanson, father of Hanson, the singing group. Diana Hanson (now the wife of Walker), played the character Rosalind.

I also played Sir Oliver Martext, a country vicar, with only one line: “Tis no matter. Nar’ a fantastical knave of them shall flaunt me out of my calling.”

Walker and Diana were also the leads in The King and I.

At Hale in the early 1970s, I took advanced Spanish courses. Most high schools only offered one or two years of Spanish but I took it for six years in a row, from seventh grade through my senior year in high school. I was never fluent in Spanish because I have never been in  situation where I had to speak it.

I took journalism and wrote a column for the school newspaper. That created my interest in a career in journalism. When I started my freshman year in college, I declared journalism as my major and I never switched.

Hale offered classes in humanities, advanced math, Latin and a lot of other courses that were not available in other public schools.

We had 30 minutes for lunch back then and I liked to rush out to my car and drive down 21st Street to get a Braum’s burger instead of eating in the cafeteria. It was silly because the cafeteria was so much cheaper and the food was really pretty good.

We had a lot of fun at Nathan Hale Highs School and we learned a lot.

Hale has some other famous graduates, including actors and singers.

I am looking forward to our 50th high school reunion in 2022. I’m sure it won’t be as well attended as the 40th reunion in 2012. Many classmates have passed away. Some are in poor health and can’t come. Others live too far away to make the trip and some probably don’t want to come for any number of reasons.

It would be great if an of our teachers were still around and could show up for a reunion. Seeing them would be a treat.

I went to Burbank Elementary School and then Bell Junior High School. Burbank is closed and Bell is now an elementary school.

Back when I was in Bell, it has seventh, eighth and ninth graders. After the ninth grade, a third of the school went to Nathan Hale, at third went to Rogers High School and about a third went to East Central High School. Whitney Junior High back then sent all their students to Nathan Hale because the two schools were right next door (they still are).

I still have some dear memories of my friends from Burbank and Bell, even those who wound up at East Central and Rogers.

Someday, I would like to go to a junior high reunion for Bell Junior High. Attendance would be slight but it would be wonderful to see some of the people I went to school with way back then. I actually knew a larger percentage of students at Bell than at Hale because Hale had so many students that I just didn’t know.

A 50th reunion is a remarkable achievement. It is even more significant when you can share it with former classmates who have traveled similar but unique paths in life.

And in 2026, Lord willing, I will go to my 50th reunion at The University of Oklahoma in Norman.