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Southold’s Class of 1955 remembers the good times 60 years later

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The 13 members of the Southold High School Class of 1955 walked around the restaurant Wednesday afternoon with nametags sporting pictures of themselves from senior year, sharing memories and learning what’s changed in town over the past 60 years.

Yearbooks spanning the group’s four years at Southold High School were fanned out over a nearby table. One woman, in true high school spirit, mentioned how she wanted everyone to sign her yearbook before the lunch was over.

“We were a very close class and we enjoy seeing each other,” said attendee Sandy Berry.

Alumni and their spouses traveled from places all across the country — including Florida, Texas and Massachusetts — to Soundview Restaurant in Greenport Wednesday afternoon for the reunion, the first meet-up held in a decade.

The classmates swapped stories from their youth; they remembered the class elections, the school parties and dances, the sporting events, the senior class visit to Washington D.C. and, of course, graduation.DSC_0586

A large photograph of the class on that senior trip was displayed on one of the tables, next to a photograph of the alumni from the fourth grade. Nine of the people at Wednesday’s reunion were in that photo.

Bob Diefenbacher and Swede Boergesson joked about not recognizing themselves as nine-year-olds, especially without their beards. Mr. Boergesson marveled about how much he looked just like his grandson.

Mr. Diefenbacher, who organized the event, found that between the 28 living classmates, the group had 76 children and 119 grandchildren, and 15 great grandchildren.

“We have had lots and lots of times together as a class when we were together,” Mr. Diefenbacher said. “We all went to the same building, well most of us, to the same building for the whole 12 years … everybody partied together, we had good times together.”

There wasn’t drinking at those parties, he notes. It “wasn’t that sort of thing.”

“We had picnics on the sound,” he said. “We would go up to a beach and have a picnic. Horton’s Point, often, is where we would go.”

Mr. Diefenbacher said he was happy to reconnect with the people he wasn’t able to keep in touch with in between reunions.

“I think all of us are happy to be out here,” he said.

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