I went to Central High School in Fargo ND,
graduating in June 1940. It was a remarkable class. Within two years the males of this class of over
400 were spread all over the globe. Almost all of them never came back to Fargo. You know the drill,
"When they've seen Paree----".
I attended the 50th reunion in 1990. It was great. In those fifty
years I had only seen three of the people I graduated with.
Of course this was probably also true of the classes from 1938
through 1943. And for that matter it was probably true in every town and hamlet in the United
States.
The school burned to the ground somewhere around 1960. Most of us
thought a lot of the school, had generally a very good experience. The school paper was called "The
Cynosure". A lot of the people that never moved back to Fargo helped a former graduate Bill Snyder,
and they formed an alumni group for a high school! And they began to issue new copies of the
Cynosure , four times a year.
The important part of this story is the existence of this alumni
association and the newspaper they print. What prompted me to write this is a letter I wrote to them
and they published in the Winter 1999 issue. A friend of mine in high school just sent me a clipping
of the letter as a bit of nostalgia. And here it is.
I can still receive e-mails at that address but the one I'm using now is charlesdills@mac.com.
Remarkable.