Fifty years ago they walked the halls of Pelham High together, but have not met since.
Nancy Coleman Kuipers and Morris Damude chatted at a school photograph display during Pelham High’s latest reunion Saturday at Lipa Park.
“It was a great place to go,” said Damude from Niagara Falls.
“I loved going there. It was so much fun,” said Coleman, now Kuipers, who lives in Port Colborne.”
They played in the orchestra and marching band during the 1950s.
“We travelled a lot” to parades and concerts, she said.
It wasn’t the only unexpected reunion. Organizer Vilma Moretti, wearing school colours of a maroon top with a Pelham “P” and grey skirt, ran into former teacher Wilma Secen Morog. They last talked in the 1950s.
Secen, as she was then, started her teaching career at Pelham High.
“We couldn’t have asked for a better day,” said Moretti as the sun shone over the grounds of the Slovenian National Home.
More than 400 shared stories, studied photo displays, flipped through year books and renewed friendships during this latest reunion of students from a vanished school. The former students marked the 40th anniversary of the closing of the Fenwick’s Pelham District High School in 1974. Today it is an apartment building.
Declining enrolment and the opening of new high schools such as E.L. Crossley Secondary School in the 1963 brought an end to the older school.
The reunion goers filled Lipa Park’s patio, meeting rooms and hall roaming from one to the other.
The school was known for its sports but they weren’t the only activities.
“We had theatre, lots of singing, dancers, stage band and of course, the marching band,” said Kaye Neal Wilson searching photos for friends. “I played drums.”
Brian Walker taught at Pelham High and later Crossley. For 25 years, he served on Pelham Town Council.
“It was a fun place to teach. There was great pride in the school. It had two football teams, junior and senior, giving everyone a chance to play,” he said.
“We had a young teaching staff with most of us in our 20s,” the former guidance counsellor said. He delights in hearing what students went on to do.
Craig Stirtzinger grew up at Pelham High. With his family farm across the street he slipped into the school to watch basketball games when he was very young. Later, as a student, he remembered the balconies of the gym filled with students cheering at games or watching assemblies.
“The Grade 13s had their own balcony,” he said.
Stirtzinger, who is now city manager for Welland, said he was inspired by the teachers he had.
Principal Bud Ker, Brian Walker and math teach Jackie Morgan not only taught well, they influenced how students like him made decisions later.
“Sometimes it worked out that way.”
Stirtzinger, who was a student council vice-president, chatted with 1973 president Andy Studley, a Toronto environmental engineer and business operator.
“Those were good times,” said Studley. “It seems there were always parties on Friday and Saturday nights. At least, that’s the way we remember it.”
Jack Junkin remembers his teachers from the 1960s including George Holmes in math, Catherine Holmes in science and Cecil Dove in agriculture.
Pelham High was a rural school full of farm kids including Junkin.
“We entered teams representing the school into the International Plowing Match.”
Ed Pecan, who went to Pelham High from 1954 to 1959, drove four hours down from Muskoka Saturday with his wife Yolanda.
What he remembers about school life “was the girl he couldn’t get.”
But he was quick to say it worked out for the best in the long run.
