"For so many years I felt that I was just this shadow in other peoples' live, so to go to the reunion and really be remembered as a person that
other people liked and cared about ...that was very, very special," she said. There were over 300 graduates and attendees of Nile C. Kinneck High School in Las Vegas that weekend. Known as "Yo-Hi", the school served mostly
military dependents in Yokohama and Yokosuka, Japan. Operated by the U.S Dept. of Defense, Yo-Hi students will tell you their time in high school was indeed, in Davis' words "very, very special." And that's why an open reunion,
concentrating on the classes from the mid-60's to the mid-70's, was such a hit.
As military dependents, Yo-Hi graduates left school to scatter to the winds. They moved to Florida and New Hampshire, New Jersey and Kansas,
North Carolina, California, Hawaii and Canada. They came to the reunion to revisit the times they experienced together: life in the past lane.
"The best part had to be seeing my 'first love' again," Diane Murphy, a
Beaufort, S.C., Realtor said. Murphy last saw him in July of 1968. She wore the ID bracelet he gave her to the reunion.
"So many people couldn't believe I kept it all these years," Murphy, class of 1970, said.
Murphy, who is confined to a wheelchair following a car accident 10 years ago, made the trip alone. She roomed with Sharon Donahue Day, now a Tucson resident, a much-beloved English teacher at Yo-Hi. Day, one of several
teachers who made the trip, was greeted with squeals of joy by everyone who saw her.
"She had such an impact on me," Sue Nathan, '69, a utilities executive from Kansas City said. Many reflected how much of an impression the
teachers, the students and their years at Yo-Hi had on their lives.
The times were turbulent. Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated. There were riots in Watts. Unrest reigned on campus: the Black Panthers,
the Students for a Democratic Society, Kent State -- all were all etched into America's collective memories. Long hair, rock music, drugs, political activism, sexual promiscuity -- the younger generation was peeling away from the
standards set by their parents. But little of that was evident on military installations overseas.
"Our experience was probably similar to any high school in an isolated place except we were also living in a tumultuous time
with many fathers gone from home because of the Vietnam War," Debra Branin Coglianese, '69, said. A physical therapist who lives in Arlington, Mass., Coglianese looked forward to the opportunity to reconnect with old friends -- and
her past. Like many of the rest, she had first attended at least one of several mini-reunions leading up to the main event.
Held in Colorado, New York, California, Washington state, Oregon and Virginia, just to name a few,
the mini-reunions acted only to whet the appetites of the DoDDS attendees who went. Most had thought they'd never see one another again.
"It was only after losing touch with each other that we realized the value and
importance of what we had lost," Joe Ross, a 1971 graduate who lives in Roseburg, Ore., said. A forest ranger, Ross was one of the driving forces behind the reunion, and in particular, "Yo-Stock 2000", an informal jam session and
dinner held on Friday night before the dinner-dance. The son of a U.S. Navy commander, Ross spent a total of 13 years in Japan. His parents even retired there.
"I think it's a good thing to long for those persons, places and memories of the past," he said.
There were some, of course, who could not attend. Many classmates and teachers had passed on. Steve Norden, now a
minister and the pastor of New Hope Reformed Church in Powell, Ohio, delivered a moving tribute at the dinner-dance on Saturday night. He closed by calling the names of classmates who were no living. One was Ann Errion, '68, who
died from breast cancer. Her sister, Jennifer, class of '70, fought back the tears after Ann's name was called. An educator who specializes in drug and violence prevention in Atlanta, she credited her membership on an alumni email
list with helping her get through trying times.
"I think I was more ambivalent (about Yo-Hi) in my early days on the list but as my sister was dying, all the folks on the list gave me so much unselfish support and love that
I knew it was very important for me to attend," Errion said.
The two most famous alumni were not there. One, Tina Lutz Chow, model, wife of international restaurateur Tony Chow, and a fixture on the best-dressed list in the
1980s, died several years ago. The second, Mark Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars series, showed no interest in attending -- in person, that is. Someone brought along a life-sized cardboard cut-out of Hamill in his
Skywalker costume and propped it in the corner, where a number of alumni had their photo taken with him. The cut-out also appeared in several of the class group photos.
Laughter was certainly more prevalent than tears
during the events, which encompassed a jam session on Friday night, the dinner-dance on Saturday and a hastily-organized brunch on Sunday. There was tremendous anticipation, yet despite the obvious physical changes the alumni had
gone through in the elapsed 30 years, none were disappointed. Mike Lau, a 1972 graduate who lives in San Jose and works as an engineer at Lockheed Martin, said he believed both the military connection and the foreign residence
helped shaped the attitudes of the "brats" at Yo-Hi.
"When we initially shared our feelings (with others)...they found it hard to understand what we hold in our beloved Yo-Hi past," Lau said.
Lau's sentiments were
echoed time and again by others. Pat Holmstrom Howard, '69, a Kailua, Hawaii, business owner explained it this way:
"I am not sure if everyone feels the same kind of bond with their high schools, or if it just because we
were also bound by the unfamiliar places we lived as overseas brats...we had to become buddies...we had a natural link to each other."
Dr. Katie Browne Perry, a professor and assistant dean at the College of Agriculture and
Life Sciences at N.C. State University, attended Yo-Hi, leaving two years before her 1970 graduation. The Cary, N.C., resident says that despite having graduated elsewhere, she considers Yo-Hi her alma mater.
"It's
uniqueness binds the students, I also think the atmosphere of acceptance is much higher at (military dependent) schools," Perry said.
John Lowell, a 1971 graduate who lives in Portland, Ore., also credits the military
affiliation with helping to shape the lives and of the students who attended there.
"The military, I think, also fostered a sense of community...the bases seem to me to be modeled after small Midwestern towns," Lowell, a
real estate appraiser, said.
Others agreed. Primarily the sons and daughters of Marines and sailors, the school also served a smaller group of civilians. There were a few children whose parents were stationed in Japan with
corporations, the children of teachers and administrative staff at the school , civil service and missionaries off-spring. But U.S. military dependents were, by far, in the majority.
Harry Burkett, a Flowery Branch, Ga.,
resident who graduated from Yo-Hi in 1968 and works as a manager for the Dept. of Human Resources, says he believes schools in the dependent school system work because the constant uprooting and changes in cultural differences
provide an opportunity that goes beyond what "stateside" teens experience.
Cathy Putzer Levin, a Novato, Calif., resident and full-time mother who quit her job as a medical laboratory technician to raise her children, says
the advantage of an overseas military high school was the instant acceptance of newcomers.
"There was no mass of people who had been going to school together for 10 years, so newcomers never felt like outsiders," Levin said.
Nanci Spencer Fisher, who attended, but did not graduate from Yo-Hi agrees with Levin.
"As a military brat, my experience with friendships were that you made friends fast because you never knew how long you
were going to be there and when you would be leaving," Fisher, who lives in Quinlan, Tex., and is in retail accounting, said. Attending a school that was small and so different from the high schools in the U.S. had other
advantages. There was room for individuality.
"Those years spent there defined us for the rest of our lives in may respects," Nancy Parker Frioud, '67, a Tarpon Springs, Fla., businesswoman said. Frioud, who attended the
reunion without her family, said she didn't want to worry about someone else having a good time.
"I very selfishly just wanted to be able to spend as long as I could with my old friends," she said.
Laura Stephens
Schisler, who married her high school sweetheart, Gary, is an elected official in Pennsylvania. Gary Schisler is a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy and an airline pilot. Initially reluctant to attend the reunion, Gary later
admitted he was glad he did. As for Laura, she says she was amazed at how quickly the attendees all slipped back into the people she knew 30 years ago.
"The amazing thing...was that curtain was lifted as soon as out
conversations began (and) that high school voice and body emerged right away, and that 17-year-old was the person I saw," Laura said.
Another couple that attended -- Alan Hill, '68, and Lisa Coffey Trautman, '67 -- found
one another through reunion preparations. The pair, who live in Texas, were not friends in high school. Coffey, in fact, says she didn't remember Hill or the band in which he played at all. But when Mike Roley, another '68
graduate, introduced them over the Internet, they began a relationship that has led to love.
"Alan and I connect on a plane that transcends all time," Coffey says.
Many at the reunion felt a special bond with their
old classmates. Cherie Reed Garrett, '71' a Davis, Calif., CPA says her husband has been to many reunions of his own but that he commented to his wife it seemed Yo-Hi graduates had a hunger for contact with one another.
"It
didn't seem to matter at the reunion if you had been close friends in high school -- I felt close and connected to everyone I spent time with," Garrett said.
The stories are different in many ways, but the outcome was the
same: Debbie Spear McIntosh, '69, a CAD/CAM technician from San Diego, says she and her sister knew immediately they would attend when the plans were drawn. Others, like Nancy Massey, '69, a web designer in Philadelphia, were more
hesitant. She says she found more in common with the new friends she made than the old ones she had in high school.
Others, such as the earliest graduates to attend the reunion -- Jim and Iva Hurst Hyatt, from the class of
1948 -- just marveled at the amount of love in the room. The Hyatts, who live in Clarksville, Tenn., have attended about 20 Yo-Hi reunions since about 1988. Jim, who is retired from the Army and Civil Service, says the Las
Vegas reunion was the largest one he's seen. A web-savvy alumni, Jim has an extensive Yo-Hi site on the Internet. He says military dependents are very special.
"Brats are unique, they live in a world that is swirling all
around them, exposed to the rigors of military life or life on the run...they have no "hometown" to speak of," he said.
But, Jim says, "brats" are taught to store away memories and move on the to next assignment.
"Then years later at a reunion, the room now becomes your "hometown" and when you enter all those stored memories are released and come back in an instant; you cry out loud with joy -- you cannot stop the tears -- it's not
describable," he said.
The "kids from Yo-Hi" sang the school song, remembering -- much to their astonishment -- every word after 30 years. They danced a conga line. They posed for pictures. They dragged out the photos of
their kids and passed them around. They hugged old friends and embraced new ones. They remembered. They cherished. They left, reluctantly, complaining time was too short and vowing to do it again soon. They left with tears in their
eyes, much as they'd left Japan when their fathers' were ordered to a new duty station.
Military brats, all, they were once rootless teens with no real hometown, who found a sense of belonging, love and acceptance in a
run-down building in post-war Japan. And when, one by one, they left Las Vegas, on planes and in cars, they left with the Rev. Steve Norden's words in their minds:
"I wonder why we waited so long to make this reunion happen?"
