Tigard’s class of ’44 — still close after all these years
The Tigard Union High School class of 1944 gathers for its 65th annual reunion
Jonathan House / The Times
Former classmates Bob Trappe (left) and Don Frame look over photos of Tigard Union High School at their 65th class reunion.
After graduating more than 60 years ago, the members of the Tigard Union High School class of 1944 are still going strong.
The group met for their 65th high school reunion, Oct. 16, at the Crown Center in King City, celebrating more than a half-century of good times and friendship.
“We’ve always just been a really close class,” said Bonnie Jensen, 82, “the war does that to people.”
Jensen believes that the classmates are just as close now as they were in 1944.
“Once we get together we just never stop talking. I think we’re real close.”
The classmates now live from as far away as Texas and Florida, and as close to home as King City and Durham. Each year they make an effort to get together, Jensen said, to talk about the old days and stay connected to each other’s lives.
“If you don’t go one year, you might not see those people next time,” said Patti Shute, who drove from Jacksonville, Ore., to be at the event. “Over half of us are gone, now, you know.”
Of the 75 students who graduated in the class of ’44, 35 classmates are still alive, Jensen said, and the list grows shorter each year.
“We had 20 attend this year’s reunion, and that’s not bad at all, I thought,” Jensen said.
The relationships the classmates have with each other does not end at friendship, Jensen said. A number of the classmates have fallen in love and gotten married over the years.
“We started out with six couples when we graduated,” said Jensen, who married her high school sweetheart in December, 1944. “But over the years as their spouses passed away, two of them married other people from the class.”
One of those two couples was Betty and Bob Trappe, who were married five years ago.
“Both of our spouses had passed and we reconnected about five years ago. Besides,” joked Trappe “I already know his background.”
Lively bunch
The reunions began after the end of World War II, when the classmates began to meet every five years.
“We’re normally very well behaved people,” said Trappe. “But there was one time where we did act a little crazy.”
The group was politely asked to never come back to the Sweetbriar Inn, in Tualatin, after their 25th anniversary, when classmates dove into the swimming pool at 2 a.m. fully clothed, and the police were called due to noise violations three times during the night.
Trappe said that antics like that were back in the group’s “younger days.”
More antics from the groups “younger days” included putting a chunk of limburger cheese into the ventilation of the high school’s gymnasium which — in the words of classmate Bill Gilham — caused “quite a stink.”
Then there was the time that the students decided to celebrate Senior Skip Day and go to a party. “And principal Fowler found Ralph Day swinging from the rafters with a bottle of beer in his pants,” Trappe said. “Fowler shows up, and the bottle falls through his pants onto the floor, shattering all over the place.”
The group has fond memories of their principal, who served until his death in 1954.
“Fowler was a great guy, but he wouldn’t take any baloney,” said Gilham. “If you just told the truth he’d be lenient with you, but if you tried any funny stuff, you’d find yourself after school for a week.”
Uncertain future
After celebrating their 50th anniversary, it was decided to step the reunions up to every other year, and then, finally, to once a year.
“We had lost quite a few people by that time,” Jensen said. “It just seemed like, ‘Hey, why don’t we meet more often?’”
Now, after 65 years, Jensen said that the reunions might be drawing to a close.
“I don’t know if we’ll have them again, I really don’t,” said Jensen. “It’s getting harder and harder for people to drive, and get together.”
Jensen said that a number of classmates already attend Tigard High School’s all-class reunion, held each summer at Cook Park.
“That might be our goal from now on, is to have people come there and get together,” said Jensen. “I just don’t know. If we could see each other once a year at Cook that’d be helpful.”
Those were the days
The class of 1944 lived in a much different Tigard than most residents would recognize today, Jensen said.
“For one thing, there’s paved roads.”
The Tigard that Jensen remembers was a time before Interstate-5 was even an idea. A time when children could sit on the corner of Main Street and not see a single car drive by.
“In those days, if you did after-school activities you probably didn’t have any way to get home, so you would walk.”
Jensen, who lived in Mapelwood at the time, said that it was not uncommon to walk everywhere you went. “Of course that wasn’t a big deal for us anyway, because there wasn’t any gas or tires (because of World War II).”
Many of the class did their part at home for the war effort, Jensen said.
“There was an old Methodist church across from the high school, and in the tower of the church was a watching station for planes,” Shute said. “You would sit up there with your telescopes and your binoculars and watch for planes.”
On the wall of the outpost was a chart, with the silhouettes of various planes, so that watchers could tell which were friendly and which were part of an invasion force, Shute said.
“I never could tell what any of them were, except for one,” said Shute. “An American P-38. They had plane-spotters for about four years there. I did that during my senior year.”
Jensen also worked as a plane-spotter during high school.
While Shute and Jensen said that they enjoyed their experiences serving their country, Jensen still remembers one important day during her high school experience.
“There were a few Japanese people who went to our school. And then, one day, they just weren’t there anymore,” she said. “They’d been taken away. People just didn’t understand all that.”
After graduation, many of the class joined the service to fight in World War II, including Jensen’s husband who served in the Navy on the U.S.S. Pine Island in the South Pacific.
The class of 1944 did not lose a single man in World War II.
“Of course, in 1944, things were slowly starting to wind down,” Jensen said. “Other classes might have lost folks, but we didn’t.”
But despite the changes that Tigard has seen over the decades, Jensen said that one thing has remained the same.
“They haven’t done a single thing to (Highway) 99W,” she said. “It’s still exactly the same as it was. But there’s a lot more traffic now.”