Hello Everybody, welcome, and Happy 60th Birthday to us all.

 

I think it is safe to say that it has been a long and winding road for us all since we walked out of George S. Thompson High School 42 years ago.

 

First, I think we need to acknowledge the hard work, dedication and determined efforts of the Birthday Committee-especially Mary, Becky, and Jan-without whom this event could not have occurred. Big hand please.

 

I know that some of us complained about the high price we paid to be here tonight, but besides the great service and good food, the Dick Masters Band is playing later on, and just to hear them is worth the price of admission. Dick has assembled a very talented group of extraordinary musicians to play for us tonight. Dick and his band are gonna make us shake our booties, which is maybe not as pretty a sight as it once was….

 

So thank you Dick and crew

 

WE are 60 years old!!! Can you imagine?! When we think back of all the changes we have seen in our lives-its incredible, think about it-we have seen black and white television, color television Big screen television, LCD television, transistor radios, 5 wars, assassinations, racial equality, women’s liberation, hippies, Woodstock,11 Presidents, computers, cell phones, Facebook, Men on the Moon, space exploration, global warming, oil spills, hurricanes, tornadoes, the Beatles, the Rolling stones, Lady Gaga. We have seen 911,Kent State, MP3”s, Xboxes, Cubs still not winning the World Series, Hawks winning the Stanley Cup…the list goes on and on and on…..

 

 60 years! Personally, we have made friends, lost friends, we have been married,  some divorced, promoted, been laid off, kicked around, hung up, brought down, gotten high, been fired and retired. We have had kids and grandkids. We have been to many a Spring Sing and PTO meetings, we have been to soccer games, football games basketball games. We have made hundreds of school lunches and changed many thousand of diapers-and wiped many a little butt. Then maybe we have had to kick some teenage butt. We have had many trials and tribulations, ups and downs, highs and lows, heartaches and heartbreaks, births and deaths, good times and bad times, comedies and tragedies, poor times and rich times but we have survived and thrived-and HERE WE ARE TONIGHT!!!

 

Now, as we ease into our “Golden Years” as our bellies, boobs, and our butts sag, as we nurse our aching joints, tend our plaquey arteries, curse our unreliable bowels, and care  for our still beating hearts-it is time to

 

Congratulate ourselves for all our accomplishments-or simply for living as long as we have!

 

If Peter Holmer was here, I am sure he would like to offer a blessing. I am not a preacher (and obviously not a good public speaker)-but I will give it a try…

 

Dear Lord, thank you for this day, our families, our friends, our health, and this dinner we are soon to eat. Watch over our classmates who are not here tonight and the ones who have passed before us. Thank you for all our many blessings, and forgive us our trespasses. AMEN

 

I know at our age we may not have been able to accomplish all the things we had wanted and hoped to. We may never sail around the world solo, we may never climb Mount Everest, we may never get a hole-in –one, we may never be voted the sexiest Person in America, and we may never have that ménage a trois we always dreamed of..

But we must always take satisfaction, comfort, and pride at all that we have achieved and experienced and accomplished. And I am sure that our fondest wish is to have a positive impact on the world, at least our own world, and that our 60 years on this planet has made it a better place.

 

If we can say that, we can say Hooray!

 

Thanks for coming, its great for us all to be together-let’s drink a glass to the Class of 68-and to being 60 years old!!