Shared Youth: Thoughts on a 20-Year Reunion

“To forget is the secret of eternal youth. One grows old only through memory. There’s much too little forgetting.” 
― Erich Maria Remarque, Three Comrades

I just returned from a short trip to Farmingdale, New York to attend my twenty year high school reunion. Some random thoughts coming back from the trip.

As an active duty military officer, the reunion made me realize I possess something that my children will never have; a stable of literal lifelong friends. Our reunion was a gathering of friends who have known each other for 20, 25, 30, or 35 years. We had one high school, one middle school, and four elementary schools. For those of us in different elementary schools, Farmingdale had a unified youth sports program. We may not see each other in our elementary school class photos, but we see each other in baseball team pictures, or the annual Farmingdale Hawks Yearbook.

I live in a world where I move every few years, and my family moves with me. I would offer to those that are raising their kids in the same place, appreciate what you had, and what your children will have.

In a world of social media, I was uncertain on what to expect. I keep up with everyone’s profile and updates, and there was a measured expectation that there would be little to celebrate or learn at the reunion. Make no mistake, nothing compares to seeing friends in person. Conversation at three feet trumps virtual conversation in 140 characters. There is only so much you can know about someone by stalking their Facebook page and reading their tweets.

The reunion put into perspective some of my recent travels. The nature of my job has me in places across the globe. Indeed, six days before the reunion I returned to my home after a 13-hour plane flight from Seoul Korea. At each stop in my travels, I make it a point to see people I know. In April, while working at Nellis Air Force Base I was lucky enough to see two of my fellow 96 Dalers. I had not seen either one in nearly 20-years, but began our conversation like it was only 20 minutes. In August, while in London another friend who lives in Cambridge drove into the city to have dinner. Living in Williamsburg, a tourist location, I am lucky to grab a drink with friends passing through taking their kids to Busch Gardens. When you get to 38, travelling is not about what you see, travelling is about who you see.

Nothing unites people like a shared youth.

Nothing unites people like a shared youth. Ulysses S. Grant wrote in his memoirs that he never feared the reputation of Confederate Generals. Grant had either attended West Point, or fought in the Mexican-American War with many of them. Grant knew them as teenagers, and thus was never intimidated by them on the battlefield. No matter how far we go in life, it is our childhood friends that keep us grounded to who we are.

Although we all come from the same place, the diversity of our class is astounding. Not just in terms of race and religion (growing up I attended an equal number of bar/bat mitzvahs and communion parties), but also in the varied set of political views we see on our Facebook feed. A shared youth tends to break down those walls. There was a diversity of careers. Indeed the Daler Class of 96’ reunion may have been the safest place on Long Island the night of 8 October. The Nassau, Suffolk, and NYPD had quite a showing. The dance floor hosted paramedics and doctors. Had trouble broken out at the after party a cadre of lawyers could represent us in court. We had teachers, an assistant principle who we all know should be the last person disciplining class clowns, financial analysts, business owners, and accountants. Two of the nation’s best chefs attended, as did a local television news anchor. I will end the litany of career titles with the most represented and most important of careers, that of a parent.

When you get to 38, travelling is not about what you see, travelling is about who you see.

It is easy to write about all the great things of our reunion. But with everything else in life, when there is good there is bad. A no-cost alternate reunion assembled simultaneously.I took the time to take my family (wife and two kids) to New York, put my two dogs in boarding for six days. Others traveled from distant places such as Florida, Las Vegas, and England to attend the reunion. Lets call a spade a spade; putting long-term friendships into conflict by hosting a competing reunion is wrong. Hosting a simultaneous event forced upon us a decision to choose between two groups of friends. I never expected that, but it was an easy decision.

Reunion weekend reminded me of the important aspects of life. Nothing matters more on this earth than relationships with other people; be they spouses, children, parents, friends, and anyone else who enters our world. Over the course of the previous 10-years, gatherings began to occur at the funerals of our parents. In the last two-years the 96 Dalers lost two of our own. As we advance through the years we come to understand that each moment of life is small shove to the end, and that every day is another day gone. Know what matters in this world.

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Daniel Sukman is a strategist in the US Army, a former Military Fellow at the Project for International Peace & Security (PIPS), and a member of the Military Writers Guild. The views expressed here are the author’s alone and do not reflect those of the U.S. Army or the Department of Defense.