2 good 2 be 4 gotten

Or so we had hoped. However, after the final homework is turned in, the last intricately folded note passed and the closing bell rings, high school becomes an increasingly faint memory.

Sure it was to be BFF and LYLAS for eternity or even a meaningful "see you around," but after 5, 10, 40 or more years out of the classroom, the idea of getting back with old pals on our own becomes increasingly unlikely.

People marry, move, work on careers or just part ways; but the memories of high school are always there -- like a finished chapter, but not the end of the story.

Class reunions enable graduates to read a bit further. After all, once a tiger, knight, warrior or panther, always a ...

For organizers of some east suburban high schools, the idea of seeing today's men and women who were the boys and girls of their yesterday is motive enough to put in endless hours of detective work, planning and even a dip into personal finances.

Marlene (Miller) Luniewski has always been the motivator for the Turtle Creek Class of 1962 reunions held every five years since the first decade.

She and her husband were retiring to South Carolina this year and the upcoming reunion wouldn't be given her usual attention. So, in stepped classmate Carol (Short) Rodgers, also a South Carolina transplant, to help by handling reservations.

Turtle Creek was a close-knit district with everyone pretty much liking each other, the women say. All of the class of 183 grew up walking together to school and staying close by to shop in their community.

"Wilmerding was like a foreign country, another planet," Luniewski says. She remembers being a senior in high school before going into the neighboring town since there just was no reason to venture out of Turtle Creek.

The reunions have always been well attended. Luniewski says for the 10th there were prizes for categories like the most changed and one traveling the furthest. The attendees wore name badges that also sported a copy of their senior pictures. People were more interested in how people looked and what they were doing, the reunion specialists say.

"Some people stayed away from the first few because they felt they wouldn't fit in or weren't part of the group," she says but insists in reality there were no cliques.

Attendance changed over the years with more people wanting to just celebrate the group's roots. The 40th was marked with each guest getting a video made from slides of yearbook pictures and lots of photos of Turtle Creek from the collection of Roy Jobe. Background music including "Born in a Small Town" and "When I was Seventeen" pretty much summed up the feelings of the graduates.

Rodgers wouldn't think of not getting together with new and old friends every five years and has also attended extra events like the summer picnic held the year members of the Class of '62 turned age 60.

One of the unanswered questions for Rodgers was the whereabouts of her senior prom date, Ken, who had never shown at any of the reunions. She recently tracked down her long ago date -- also retired to South Carolina.

After telephoning the bewildered man and telling him who she was, Rodgers realized he didn't have a clue. She took it one step further by adding, "I am still in my prom dress and the flowers are wilting." That did elicit a response, which led to a pleasant conversation with a bit of closure, she says.

Her husband, Bill Rodgers, has become an honorary member of the Turtle Creek gang just by virtue of attending all reunions. He is in the process of planning his golden reunion in Columbia, S.C., the first in 30 years. He is finding the feeling in the South is not the same as in the Pennsylvania valley.

"Pittsburghers seems to cling more to the past. They think Terry Bradshaw is still quarterback. There's a tendency to relive past glory; yet friends and family are everything," he observes.

His Columbia alumni are more difficult to find, even for Bill Rodgers who retired after nearly 35 years in Washington government with U.S. national security and intelligence agencies.

Heavy use of cell phones instead of household ones is complicating matters, he says, along with so many people wary of telemarketers and suspicious of strangers.

On the other hand, use of modern technology is saving the Penn Hills Class of 1977, according to organizer Gina (Costa) Calabro.

Putting together a reunion for the large class of 1,250 has gotten easier in the Internet age. She has built a database over the years from people registered on class mates.com and by Googleling specific names. More than 400 people were found from such sites and are now kept informed using e-mail.

From her home in Connecticut, she's able to plan the Nov. 23 PH reunion with fellow classmates located throughout the country.

On their Penn Hills reunion message board, she posts upcoming planning events that are held as a conference on talkshoe.com. Everyone is encouraged to log on. The conference is so inclusive that one of the committee members was recently able to keep involved while traveling in New Zealand.

Calabro acknowledges that at first some people would attend reunions to see "how good does the head cheerleader look or who lost a hundred pounds."

By the 30th there is no longer a concern about appearances, although Calabro admits, with a chuckle, to dieting. "We all have some kind of history together, formed friendships and that's what has become important."

A decade seems to be long enough to go wondering for the '97 Franklin Regional class. Megan Slater has taken on the task of asking her approximately 200 classmates whether or not they want to get together for the first time this December.

Slater, who had been president her junior year, took on the job of making reunion plans when the Franklin Regional senior president felt it couldn't be done from her home in Austin, Texas.

Fellow alumna Melissa (Damratoski) Julius who had just finished arranging her own wedding and was still in event-planning mode was recruited by Slater to help.

Together they have sent out feelers through Internet sites including classmates.com, reunions.com and myspace.com.

Slater, now a deejay at 105.9-The X radio, says she has always been a "take charge" person and shouldn't surprise people by what she does now as she was involved in organizing things like the battle of the bands back in high school. She has no apprehension about being seen, just excitement of hearing from old classmates.

Julius wants to be the behind-the-scenes person for the reunion. Because she has lost contact since graduation with a few good friends, her interest was piqued by the idea of the class's reunion.

Because of responses on the FR Web site message board, Julius has been able to contact people she hasn't seen in three or more years. "It's like no time has passed," which is just the kind of feeling she thinks most people will have after a reunion.

"People have their information on classmates.com so I know they are affiliated." Some have left messages, she says, just to make it known that they don't want to be involved. With computers, "If you want to be found, you can be found."

Lisa (Edwards) Rendulic is taking advantage of all the Internet has to offer while making arrangements for the Norwin Class of 1987.

Her slick Web page www.norwinclassof87.myevent.com is used to spread reunion news almost as well as telling a "secret" to your best girlfriend.

There have been more than 6,500 hits on the site since March. With hundreds of yesteryear pictures, including the yearbook photos of all seniors, the .com is a must-stop for the class.

All but a handful of the graduating class has been found through past lists and use of an online people search. For $14, out of her pocket, Rendulic was able to find 300 classmates in three days. She has replied to more than 5,000 e-mails.

A majority of the class has gotten on the Web site to enjoy the photo galleries, blogs and to fill in their individual bio pages, all in anticipation of the Sept. 1 event.

Rendulic says her class has matured and moved past high school. She no longer worries that some clown will pull her chair out from under her as she tries to sit down to dinner or gravitate to other sophomoric deeds.

Every week since May, Rendulic e-mails a different postcard to each classmate listing in ascending order "Top Ten Reasons to Come to Your Reunion."

Beginning with "That is an awfully long time not to see someone you were unable to go one day without talking to," and climbing through "good excuse for a night out" and "adults only." The class is reminded at No. 1 that "Someone is really hoping to see 'you' there."

The Internet is making class reunions easier to organize, while at the same time, more recent graduates are finding that having former classmates just a mouse click away is taking the "re" out of reunion.

Students of this millennium were in near-constant contact during their school years spending hours instant messaging and in chat rooms each day after school and on weekends. Many still stay in touch through MySpace, Facebook and other social networking Web sites.

Questioning why get back together when you've never grown apart, may be the reason that Norwin Class of 2003 has unofficially put off plans for its five-year reunion.

Garret Choby, '03 senior class president, says technically a lot of young people haven't moved away and others are busy finishing degrees or preparing for grad school.

The recent Grove City College grad heads off to medical school at Penn State in the fall and has never personally found time for computer link-ups.

He says his circle of high school friends has always stayed in touch, usually just a phone call away. After talking to other classmates and fellow senior officers, the consensus is there's no reason to plan a formal get-together until 2013.

Choby says maybe by then there will be more of a "curiosity" about the whereabouts of the Class of 2003.