Nearly 50 members of Gainesville High School’s class of 1959 gathered Friday night to reminisce about an era when Elvis Presley played on the radio and President Dwight Eisenhower occupied the White House.  

“It’s good to see you,” Henry Lunsford said, greeting a former classmate at their 65^th and final high school reunion. “Matter of fact, it’s good to see everybody.” 

The GHS class of 1959 was the first to attend GHS for all four years, and though its grads spread from Florida to California after graduation, they still enjoy coming together for a drink, a trip down memory lane and a chat about what is going on in their lives now. 

The class has always been close. During their high school years, they drove into Marion County to buy beer because alcohol was prohibited in Alachua County. They stole rival Ocala’s football before a game and drove each other’s drunk boyfriends home. 

Gainesville was a small town with under 30,000 residents, but that didn’t stop the classmates from having fun. They would run off into the woods by Devil’s Millhopper to slide down the hill on garbage can lids, stop by the recreation center next to what was the Kirby Smith School for a Coca Cola or Pepsi, and they would go dancing at night. 

Several of the young men were part of a pseudo-Greek life organization—which was really just their friend group with the label “TKB.” That stands for “Tap a Keg of Beer,” though not all the members were drinkers. 

Lunsford recounted pranks that ranged from balancing a bucket of water over the door to the teachers’ lounge, to flushing a cherry bomb to explode in the downstairs bathroom where girls were smoking, to carrying a teacher’s yellow Volkswagen up to the door of his second-floor classroom. 

“We were serious about having fun,” Lunsford said. 

Though not every prank went over well, Lunsford said they were always good-natured and never anything that would get someone hurt or in serious trouble. 

The biggest scandal was who had mono, and whom they had kissed to catch it. 

Everybody always knew what was going on with everybody else, the classmates said, a piece of the old Gainesville that they miss. 

“It was a fun time to be here,” Fred Jones said. “I still have great friends here, great memories.” 

The word “fun” was a popular one for the classmates describing their time at GHS. They loved their teachers, their extracurricular activities and the community they were part of, though it was divided between “town” people and UF’s “gown” people. 

The classmates said P.K. Yonge, with the UF professors’ children, looked fancy, but GHS graduates also did well after high school. The class of ‘59 includes a doctor, a lawyer, PhDs and military officers, including a brigadier general. 

The class split into many different paths out of high school. Sixty-five years later, they are amazed by how much the town has changed, and how much the school has stayed the same. 

Just because school was fun did not mean school was easy, but several classmates lauded their former teachers for their efforts and care. Jones said he got the highest math scores of the class, but only because his math teacher, classmate Becky Wanninger Hunt’s mother, helped him through the subject. 

Wanninger Hunt, who is head of the planning committee, said 47 classmates were expected to attend this reunion, and only one or two did not make it. She said the main planning committee has been made up of the same people since graduation, but that smaller groups also organize their own miniature reunions. 

“We had a really close class,” Wanninger Hunt said. 

The class used to meet every year, but after the 60^th reunion, Wanninger Hunt said they have switched to meeting every five years. Now they say they will not get back together for the 70th anniversary. 

“Three of us will meet in a phone booth,” Fred Jones joked. 

Lynn Boyd, who traveled from California for the reunion, said her graduating class is a good group, and they always had fun. 

“It’s good to see everybody, sad to not see people,” Boyd said. 

Wanninger Hunt said the group has a memorial book at every reunion—the number of deceased classmates to honor has now grown to 110, out of an original class of about 265. 

Those who are left still know what is going on with each other, only now they track COVID cases and cancer instead of mono. Many said they know they can rely on their former classmates and have never fallen out of touch. 

“If something happens, there is always someone you don’t mind calling if you need help,” Wanninger Hunt said. 

Celia Evans said the relationships that have stayed in place through the years are her favorite part of the high school reunions.  The expectation of community is strong enough that she said one of the classmates’ feelings were hurt when she forgot to call him on his birthday last year. 

“It was a big class, but it was a tight class,” said Vandy Cooper Thorpe, who has been friends with Evans since they were 10 years old. 

Regina Johnson Saracini said many of the friendships are generational, as their parents knew each other first. 

“[With] some people, it doesn’t matter whether it’s been 20 years or 20 minutes,” Saracini said.