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Class of '79 30th Reunion
Chris Kemp's Speech at the Elks Club
Download the document by clicking here
30 years... there isn't one of us who, when we heard
it for the first time, didn't take a moment and ask ourselves:
Is it possible? Where did it go?
"What lies behind us, and what lies before us,
are tiny matters compared to what lies within us"
Those words were selected 30 years ago to serve as our class
motto.
Behind us? A few years with a group of 200-something
people who, like it or not, we would be forever linked- we would
always be part of the Class of '79.
Before us? Some of us had a plan for their lives...some
of us had our lives planned for us... some of us had no plans
whatsoever except make it out to the Elks Club for Robert Bronson's
graduation party (and if you remember that party you
probably weren't there).
Within us was the optimism that we can and will make a difference,
have an impact on the lives of others- to do great things.
For the past 30 years we have been witness to an ever-changing
world.
What we thought was the greatest threat to our security growing
up crumbled and was replaced by a new enemy that did something
the Soviet Union never attempted- attack America on her own soil.
Computers, which were a novelty in 1979 (Chris Schnick was the
only person I knew that could get the thing to work) came into
their own. The internet made our world much smaller, information
now travels at the speed of light and we have fundamentally changed
the way we communicate.
The economy has recovered (remember we were in a recession in
'79) crashed, boomed, crashed and now we're trying to find
a way to get it to recover again.
Personally some of the Class of '79 has lived public lives,
some have lived private ones.
We have remained close, we have drifted apart- some of us may
never be heard from again.
We have had (and lost) jobs, changed careers and some have even
have gone back to school.
We have celebrated new life coming into this world and mourned
the passing of loved ones.
Fortunes have been made, fortunes have been lost. We have picked
ourselves up and started over- enough good times and bad to write
an entire Jimmy Buffet album...
30 years later what is behind us? The entire range of
human experience. The unbelievable highs and the gut wrenching
lows that inevitably come from the simple act of making it this
far. We have learned that the "great things" we planned
to do can take many forms from publicly recognized and lauded
achievements to private acts of quiet kindness.
Ahead of us? Some are "working their plan",
some have yet to plan and some have decided that planning is
overrated. This chapter has yet to be written.
Wherever you've been over the past 30 years, and wherever
you might be in the future remember this: We are all a sum of
our parts and one thing will never change- you will always be
part of the Class of '79.
