Oak Harbor class of ‘53 celebrates 70-year reunion

After seven decades, they’re still a family.

Oak Harbor High School’s class of 1953 will gather this Wednesday to celebrate the 70th anniversary of their high school graduation.

The small group, which welcomes caretakers as well as friends from the classes of ‘51, ‘52 and ‘54, will meet at 1 p.m. Aug. 2 at El Cazador to enjoy lunch together and reminisce about memories made in a bygone era on Whidbey Island.

The 70th anniversary class reunion isn’t the first time the 1953 graduates have gotten together since finishing high school; Anabelle Mitchell, the class treasurer and one of the event organizers, said the class has continued to gather regularly since graduation, but since the COVID-19 pandemic put a temporary stop to their gatherings, it was difficult to track people down for the upcoming reunion.

Mitchell recalled that in the 1950s, Oak Harbor was a much smaller town than it is today; the class of 1953 had only around 40 students, and everyone knew not only their classmates, but their classmates’ siblings and parents, too.

This made for a close-knit community — but it also meant you couldn’t get away with anything, because undoubtedly, it would get back to your parents, Mitchell said with a laugh.

“We’re glad we graduated when we did,” Mitchell said. “We were more like a family.”

In 1953, Marilyn Monroe was rapidly rising to fame in Hollywood, the Korean War came to an end, Burger King opened its first restaurant in Florida and the early chill of the Cold War could be felt across the globe.

Carol Hallberg Olsen, another of the organizers, said a lot of things about the high school experience were different back in the early ‘50s.

There were no massive parking lots on campus, because very few students drove to school. During lunch time, students would walk to the diner across the street to buy a milkshake and a hamburger. A milkshake cost a quarter, Olsen remembered, and a hamburger cost even less. Students who brought their own lunch would sit on the lawn or on the bleachers in the gym to watch other students play ball.

Olsen, who was a cheerleader, said the sports teams seemed to do well that year. Students could pay 15 or 25 cents to ride the bus to out-of-town games.

Mitchell added that there weren’t as many choices in the curriculum as students have now; the school offered only the classes students needed to take to get to college. Outside of school, kids might spend their free time at the roller rink, the bowling alley or the occasional movie, Mitchell said, but many students, especially the “country kids,” had to go home and help with chores.

Though most of the class left Whidbey Island after graduation, Mitchell said many of them returned. She postulated that the presence of family and close, genuine friendships is what drew people back to the island.

Over the years, Olsen has assembled memory books containing pictures of the class’s time together, both early photographs from their school years and pictures of their many subsequent gatherings. She said she will bring the memory books to the reunion on Wednesday so attendees can look through them.

Most of the class was born in 1935, Olsen said, making them 88 years old now.

“But we look good,” she said.

One of her most popular memory books is the one containing obituaries of classmates, teachers and friends, Olsen said. Of the approximately 40 kids in the class of 1953, around three quarters of them have passed away.

Mitchell said there probably aren’t many people who have been to as many of their classmates’ funerals as this class has.

“We go to them all,” she said. “We go because we remember them.”

Though it may be a small group who gathers for the reunion, Mitchell said she believes it will be a good time looking through photos and collectively remembering the era of their youth.

“That’s why we like to get together,” she said. “We’re all in the same ‘time zone,’ and it’s good to be able to reminisce with people that are in your same frame of mind.”