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

By Geoff Pursinger

The Times, Oct 29, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009

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.

ADVERTISEMENTS

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.”