Per requests, from August 1, 2015:

The lyrics to the Heights High alma mater are on the first page of your memory book. Would you please stand and join in singing it.

Before I begin, I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the hard work and dedication of the best committee any chairperson could ask for. Please look for the gold stars on their name tags tonight, so you can thank them personally. Our absolutely remarkable webmaster, Stephanie Katz Farley, listed their names in a recent website email, so I’ll just ask them to stand now to be recognized. Thank you so very much…I’m proud to call you my friends.

Welcome Class of 1965! I want to thank you all for remembering to be here tonight. Maybe we actually do have some brain cells remaining!

I’m Elaine Arnoff Silver and, as of tonight, I have become my mother. 35 years ago she and my dad attended their 50-yr. reunion for their Cleveland Heights High Class of 1930. Over the past two years, I’ve been telling people that our parents had 50-yr. reunions, not we.  (Pause) I lied.

We started planning this event two years ago but, actually, our milestone reunion has been at least 50 years in the making and, in fact, up to 63 years for those of us who began our Cleveland Hts. – University Hts. education in kindergarten. Sure, many dozens of Heights classes have celebrated 50-year reunions in the past, and immeasurably more will continue to do so in the future. In fact, 50 years  from NOW this very room will be filled with 68-yr. old ladies….with tattoos! But we are the phenomenal class of 1965. You people here tonight are absolutely irreplaceable in all our lives, for you shared our adventurous three years at Heights High and have made it the best damn class Heights ever graduated!

I invite all you fellow grads to close your eyes sometime this weekend and remember walking the halls of Heights, avoiding going down the up staircases and up the down ones, our state championship swim team, sitting in your homeroom during daily announcements, the silence and sadness of Nov. 22, 1963, and everything else that made you want to be here tonight to remember and honor our great school.

So, my friends, let us now rejoice and rejuvenate, reminisce and reunionate and let us rise together after dinner and rock ‘n roll!

I leave you with Elaine’s Essential Enumerations of the Encroachment of Everlasting Elderlyism:

Don’t let aging get you down…it’s way too hard to get up!
Life is like a roll of toilet paper…the closer you get to the end, the faster it goes.
Finally, don’t call your toilet ‘John’ anymore; rename it ‘Jim’.  That way, you can tell everyone you go to the ‘Jim’ first thing in the morning!

Thank you ALL for being here. I wish you much fun tonight, lasting memories and friendships, happiness and good health as we approach the best decade of our lives….the ten years between 69 and 70. I hope we’ll meet again.