Ten members of the Class of 1945 have a monthly opportunity to catch up on their lives while reminiscing about the past.
View full sizeCarl R. Bowers, Erik C. Bowers, Jean F. Babik, Elaine C. Mazurek, Kathey A. Andereski, Charlotte A. Owen, David M. Keeney, Dorothy Quagliaroli, Dorothy L. Parenzo, Dorothy M. Bodendorf and Grace J. Wade, from left, attend a Breakfast Club meeting of Westfield HIgh School's Class of 1945. All, with the exception of Erik Bowers, Class of 2008, and Keeney, Class of 1946, are 1945 graduates.WESTFIELD – In an Internet age when smart phones and Facebook have become the prevailing methods of staying in touch, one group of high school alumni is doing it the old-fashioned way – in person.
Ten members of the Westfield High School Class of 1945 have joined forces and formed the “Breakfast Club,” providing them with a monthly opportunity to catch up on their lives as they are now while reminiscing about the past.
Dorothy M. Bodendorf clearly remembers walking a mile to school. Up hill. In the rain, and snow. (Yes, she really did.)
“From my front door to the school it was exactly one mile, so I couldn’t take the bus,” she recalled of her trek from her home on Prospect Street to what was then the city’s high school on Smith Avenue; today, it’s home to Westfield Vocational Technical High School.
Bodendorf is one of an increasingly dwindling number of Class of 1945 graduates who is now a member of the newly organized “Breakfast Club.” All in their 80s, they meet at the Friendly’s restaurant in the Westfield Shops plaza on East Main Street.
She and Grace J. Wade agree that the reunions are a good idea, and reminiscing about the days of their youth is a nice way to spend a couple of hours each month.
“We sit down and start talking, and everything comes back, “ Wade said.
The club’s first gathering on Jan. 5 included a much younger visitor, Erik C. Bowers, a 2008 graduate of Westfield High who accompanied his grandfather, Carl R. Bowers, the club’s founder.
Erik Bowers said he would be willing to teach them how to use the computer, navigate the Internet and help search for old friends on Facebook, but most said they prefer more traditional forms of communication.
For them, picking up a land-line phone and meeting for breakfast enables a personal bonding experience, they said.
The Breakfast Club, the elder Bowers said, is intended to provide the former classmates with an opportunity to socialize while recalling their high school days. With just about 80 out of 178 members of the class still living, Bowers thought establishing monthly mini-reunions would be a good way to encourage interaction.
“We talk about the old days – the different things that happened when we were in school, the dances, how we met” he said.
Bowers, a former Westfield firefighter who retired in 1983, decided to establish the monthly breakfast reunions after the class celebrated its 65th anniversary in October and realized that reuniting in five-year increments would result in even fewer numbers of classmates able to participate.
“In five years, a lot of us aren’t going to be around,” he said.
While Bowers was able to obtain some contact information from the Internet, he relied on the old-fashioned way of doing things and made telephone calls from a list compiled from the October reunion.
This group of old friends, he said, prefers the time-honored tradition of meeting in person and is not likely to start sending and accepting Facebook friend requests.
“I got some phone numbers from the computer, but we like meeting in person.”