Melrose Old-Timers Day postponed until next year

MELROSE — 2020 has been a unique year, and mostly not in a good way because of COVID-19. There’s no exception for Melrose, or its old-timers.

The Melrose School Alumni Banquet, originally scheduled for early August, has been postponed to next year. And so has the Melrose Old-Timers Day, held in conjunction with the weekend.

“We have had to postpone Old-Timers Day for one year because we don’t feel like we can meet the (safety) requirements,” said Gordon Morris, a longtime member of the Melrose Rotary Club, which has taken over the event once handled by the recently disbanded Chamber of Commerce.

“We felt like we would be contributing to the problem instead of being proactive,” Morris added. “It’s just part of the facts of life; we just have to accept and go on, and be prudent about keeping the coronavirus from getting here, we hope. Or from spreading it. When people come in from everywhere, we felt like we were just doing something we shouldn’t be doing.”

Morris said the alumni banquet was expected to draw over 100 people, and Old-Timers Day perhaps 300-500 people.

“We were just very fearful that we could be creating a potential problem,” he said.