Please Join Us On This Reunion Blog! - by Susan Kinsella, San Francisco

I don’t know why, but for the past year or more I’ve been thinking about all my Bishop Kearney classmates and wishing I could have good talks with each and every one of you. I can’t explain it because for decades I wasn't very interested in what had happened to my class.

Oh, I heard little snippets of news and occasionally I would see someone from Bishop Kearney. But mostly the only person I kept in touch with all through the years was Barb Neary.

Yet now I find myself wanting to know the stories of everyone I knew when the whole world was before us. Maybe it’s because my son is that age now, a junior in high school. He’s looking eagerly ahead to all the adventures before him, while I’m trying to figure out how my life will make sense when he goes to college.

Maybe it’s because two years ago I fell down the stairs and shattered my ankle. Interestingly, it was two of my cousins and Barb Neary – the people who have been in my life since I was a kid, not the ones in it now – who dropped everything to fly cross-country and take care of me for the many weeks when I was immobilized.

Or maybe it’s because we’re all now approaching (gulp!) 60 and it’s a natural time to reassess life, recalibrate paths.

A few years ago the Bishop Kearney Band held a reunion and it was amazing to me to see the people again who had been so much a part of my long-ago life. Then, a year and a half ago, I got a hand-written letter with familiar writing and was thrilled to find that it was from Katherine Ciak. That summer, I went to Maine and spent several days with her. As soon as we saw each other, I think we picked up in the middle of the sentence we had dropped more than three decades ago and didn’t stop talking again the whole time.

Earlier this year, Sandie Shaheen found me through the Internet and we spent a day together in San Francisco. This summer, I flew to Boston and spent a week with her and her family.

These visits flood me with memories and make me long to talk with everyone else in our class, too. I want to embrace you all and ask you, Has life been good to you? Has it been what you expected, whatever that may mean? Where are you now and what means the most to you? Who is your family? What are your passions? Who have we all become?

Katherine reminded me that this year is our 40^th anniversary of graduating from Bishop Kearney. At first, it looked like there would be no reunion party. Now, thanks to Paul Reinhardt, Steve Sleight, Jim McGrath and others who have joined them, there are great plans for those in Rochester at Thanksgiving to get together.

But not everyone can get there, and I also want a reunion that can last longer than a day. So Katherine, Barb and I thought why not organize an On-Line Reunion of the Bishop Kearney Class of 1969? If you’ll join us, we can get together over many virtual coffees and catch up with what life has brought us for the past 40 years. And we can save these conversations and revisit each other whenever we want to.

Katherine and I are offering to host this Bishop Kearney Class of 1969 blog. If you’ll send us something about what you’ve been doing, or what you’re doing now, or where you’re living and who your family is, or anything else important to you, we will post it to this blog just as you send it, without edits. You can include photos and short videos if you want. Each posting can handle up to five photos. We can link to larger photo collections. You can make comments directly and independently to any posting and we hope those can be the start of great conversations.

We would love to hear from you! I am at seek@susankinsella.com and Katherine is at Katherineciak@yahoo.com. Please join us here and tell us what you’ve been doing the past 40 years. We’re so glad to be back in touch!

Photo 1: Sue Kinsella, Barb Neary, Katherine Ciak

Photo 2: Sandie Shaheen, Sue Kinsella