Former Sarasota High School students from the class of 1951
got together at Sarasota Lock and Key Shop in downtown
Sarasota on Saturday to share stories and view old photos of
Sarasota displayed around the store. Jane Nilsen Gunn left of
Sarasota and Phyllis Wisener Kroeker, right, of Topeka,
Kansas, looker over old class
photos.
STAFF PHOTO /
ROD MILLINGTON |
In Jane Nilsen Gunn's days at
Sarasota High School, the worst thing kids did was to go behind some
bamboo and smoke cigarettes.
Gunn and about 50 members of the
Sarasota High class of 1951 reminisced about a simpler time during
this weekend's 50-year reunion.
"School lunch cost 23 cents so
when I went off campus to Florasota Gardens, I could only afford a
25-cent hotdog and glass of water. Movie star Cornell Wilde, in town
to film 'The Greatest Show on Earth,' was eating there one day,"
Gunn recalled. "What I miss most is walking down Main Street and
having merchants say, "Hi, how's your mom?' "
Like about 85 percent of her 210
classmates, Gunn moved away after graduation. But she returned in
1984 and likes most of the changes: the culture, entertainment,
shopping and "especially air conditioning."
Phyllis Wisener Kroeker of
Topeka, Kansas, and husband Frank Kroeker, who met the day after
graduation, visit Sarasota almost every year. "But I couldn't live
here. Sarasota's too big now," she said.
Others were grumbling about
getting lost on streets that had changed so much.
"It was a shock to turn onto
Main Street and not see the (razed) Palmer Bank," said Reverdy
Wright of Mount Vernon, Va.
Ernestine Gay Mott, 40-year
resident of New Port Richey, said she misses favorite places like
Smack's Drive-in "where everyone went after games."
"I remember when Sarasota had
only four stop lights. It's so congested now," said Marion Houser of
Tyler, Texas.
He said he knew when he and
classmate Glenn Cobb left to study engineering at Georgia Tech that
he wouldn't be returning. He found his niche in Texas designing and
building air conditioners for GE and Trane, while Cobb came back to
work for FPL. While reminiscing Saturday at Pete Esthus' Sarasota
Lock & Key, Houser looked across State Street at the parking lot
that replaced his dad's and brother Tom's hardware store (Adams
& Houser).
Don Brenneman, a Mennonite
pastor and former missionary from Greensboro, N.C., said he hadn't
been back since 1966.
"I remember picking up coconuts
on St. Armands before there were any shops. I didn't recognize the
bayfront," said Brenneman, whose father was the founding pastor of
Bayshore Mennonite Church.
Joan John Tatum, who came back
after two years away, misses the small-town feel and "knowing
everyone you saw on Main Street." She's a staff development trainer
at Riverview High, which didn't exist when she graduated.
"Kids today can access more
knowledge but they're just like we were, getting into mischief," she
said.
Bob Kimbrough said that the 1951
class was close knit because they went through the seventh through
12th grades in the red brick high school. He has known some of them
since first grade at Southside. He transferred to Bay Haven during
World War II when his family rented their home to military personnel
and went to live at the Ringling School of Art, where his father was
president. Kimbrough, a Sarasota attorney, later was board president
of the art school, the Florida West Coast Symphony and Sarasota
Welfare Home Inc.
Classmate Roy Chapman also
became an attorney and Joan Sullivan, who traveled the farthest for
the reunion, became a doctor in Napa, Calif. Classmates remember her
living in the John Ringling Hotel, a landmark some of the group
misses.
George Fosler, who still works
in real estate, headed the reunion planners. A Saturday tour stopped
at Sarasota High where the lobby has been restored. Saturday's
dinner dance at the Harley-Sandcastle included a slide show by
retired Sarasota Fire Department Captain Bob McLeod. Today, at Twin
Lakes Park, the group will be comparing the barbecue to the burgers
they used to eat at Smack's.
