Memories come alive at St. Mary’s

What started as a coffee date between old friends turned into a unique reunion for a group of ex St. Mary’s School students and two of their teachers.

A little over 50 years since they celebrated their Grade 9 grad, students of the class of 1973 gathered at their old stompin’ grounds to reconnect.

The reunion was held on Sept. 8 and began with a tour from the current principal at St. Mary’s School, Sue Grams.

“I just think it’s so great they are getting together after 50 years!” said Grams prior to hosting the tour.

St. Mary’s staff and students decorated the gym and baked cookies for the occasion.

Two of the reunion coordinators, Sid Deibert and Paul Harris, said they were delighted by the reception they received when they went to the school to ask if they could meet up there for the event.

“The principal that’s there now, she’s amazing. She gives us this grand tour and she’s so excited. She knocks on the classroom door because we were just talking about Mr. Krawchuk’s science class … of course the teacher is wondering ‘what is this?’ The principal is here with two old guys. So she says to the whole class, ‘Guess what?

These guys went to this school 50 years ago,” said Harris.

“I said ‘yeah, back when the dinosaurs roamed!’ And then Sid said something really cool that we would never say when we were there like ‘it’s so important for you guys to listen to your teachers because of the great education we got when we went to this school’ and the principal really thanked us, especially Sid. He got a gold star from the principal, an A plus,” Harris chuckled.

The idea came to them when Deibert drove down from Alliance, Atla. for a visit last fall. Four members of the Grade 9 class got together for coffee and reminisced about old times.

“I said ‘this is neat,’ like we sat around for a couple of hours and just told all kinds of stories … So I said ‘you know, next year is going to be

50 years since we graduated, why don’t we set up a reunion.’ And so that’s what started it,” said Deibert. “We were so close. Ninety-eight per cent of us went to school from Grade 1 to Grade 9 together. So we’re a small group that knew each other so well.”

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