Williamson: Reunion already interesting and hasn't even started yet

Invitations have gone out to the 1,209 known alumni and staff members from Causey, Dora, Lingo and Rogers schools for the all-school reunion, which will be held July 11 in Dora.

link Betty Williamson

Somehow I inherited the task of shuffling the address list for this event, but I have to say in hindsight, it has been fascinating.

While the Dora Consolidated School District encompasses 32 former schools, most of those have been gone so long that we are down to survivors from four. The two oldest names on the list graduated from Dora in 1937.

We still have addresses for 18 graduates of Lingo, which looks to have sent its last class out in 1945.

We show 59 good addresses for folks who passed through the Rogers school, the last of those in 1955.

We have 150 for Causey, including most from the last class, who graduated there in 1972.

Our research shows 460 of the people on the list still receive their mail in Roosevelt County and 55 now live in Clovis, but former students and staff members are scattered across 34 states.

Our only confirmed address outside of the U.S. is for 2002 Dora graduate Ashley Prewett, who is possibly also the only opera singer on the list. He graciously suggested we send his invitation via email, but regretted he won’t be there because he’ll be in a production of “Rigoletto” in Stuttgart, Germany, in July.

Outside of eastern New Mexico, the largest settlement of south county graduates is Lubbock, where 67 live.

Slogging through a list like this gave me fresh appreciation for people who moved to towns with whimsical names: Apache Junction, Arizona; Bellflower, California; Coon Rapids, Minnesota; Cut and Shoot, Texas; Mercy Island, Washington; and Paw Paw, Michigan.

In addition to about 40 couples, where both partners graduated from, attended and/or worked at one of the four schools on the list, I discovered relationships I never knew existed, read countless obituaries, and flipped through dozens of yearbooks.

All this, and the event has yet to happen.

If you don’t want to miss out, contact me, send an email to [email protected], or drop a post card to Dora Reunion, in care of Ladean Massey, P.O. Box 353, Dora, 88115.

Betty Williamson could waste days looking at old yearbooks … and has. You may reach her at: [email protected]