Class reunion

By MARY JANE HOLT
Contributing Writer

The MCHS Class of 1966 came together this past weekend in Warm Springs for the reunion of a lifetime. We normally get together every five years and it’s always fun, but something was different this time, and I suspect that the happy, unique success of our weekend had little, if anything, to do with human efforts.
The White House Inn was the setting. Mac’s Barbecue and Steak House did the catering. Rene Hawkin provided the music on Saturday night. And one of our own, Bill Lawrence, came out of his shell on Friday night and wowed us with guitar and song!
As perfect as was the part played by all I mention above, the real secret to the success of the weekend clearly was God’s grace.
Early in the six month planning period, I had sent out a 40 part questionnaire. Many courageous souls attempted to answer it. A couple of folks actually answered EVERY question. I was not that brave.
Then I took all the returned answers and spent several weeks composing a memory book to beat all memory books. The effort has blessed my life immeasurably, and I’m getting the impression that it has positively impacted other lives as well.
Now, I can’t tell you in this column what’s in the book. I can, however, briefly tell you a story.
By the time my family moved to Mitchell County and I started attending classes with students destined to be the Class of 1966, we had lived in 18 homes. Most folks would probably say houses, but my family had a way of making each dwelling a home.
In Mitchell County, in the Lester Community, we lived for one year in a six room home (with a bath) which I loved. Then we moved again and lived for two and a half years in a four room house. All nine of us. With no bathroom. I was ashamed.
I missed out on a lot in high school because I never let myself get close to the kids who I thought “had it all.” The nice houses. The family farms. The good looking clothes. Roots. Stability. Everything I thought I did not have.
Ah, the blind, self-centered foolishness of youth… How do we survive it?
Actually, my introduction to Camilla, Georgia came before we moved there. My dad worked full time at Turner Air Force Base, in Albany. In the afternoons, after “work”, he did past due debt collections for a Collection Agency. Then on Friday nights, and all day Saturday, he would cut meat in a grocery market that eventually closed down.
He heard that a butcher was needed at a little corner grocery just off the square in Camilla, so he began to drive down there from Albany to work on the weekends. I went with him and sold chocolate covered peanuts from the behind the candy counter at the dime store when I was 13. That was where I first began to meet the kids who were to be part of the Class of 66 -- kids whose influence would touch my life, and indirectly, yours… for all eternity.
Late Saturday night, well past midnight, Vicki put on a CD of her daughter’s music for us to hear. We are all proud mamas and daddies these days! From that CD rang out “Daddy’s Hands.”
As I quickly eased myself away from the crowd, Sherry joined me, and held me. Tears flowed. For the first time, I told a classmate about my daddy’s hardworking hands. After I, the oldest of the seven children, left home, Daddy went to Seminary and became an ordained minister. He still worked at the base (civil service), but preached on Wednesday nights, Sundays, and at any revival service where folks would listen. The hands that had cut the meat which fed our bodies eventually held a bible from which he fed souls.
When daddy died, all his earthly belongings, except his clothes, were left in a desk in the little study of the parsonage that was furnished by the church he pastored at the time. Yet, on the best day ever, the greatest minds at the New York Stock Exchange could never put a value on all that I have inherited from my daddy.
One classmate asked “why here” in reference to the location that had been chosen for the reunion. I did not really know the answer until now. But as all the emotional dust settles, I’m realizing that back home the little circles we all so foolishly drew around ourselves, such a long time ago, may have still wielded some influence, even today. So I figure God drew a bigger circle and took us all in as we came together atop a beautiful mountain in Warm Springs, Georgia.