Rutherford ladies celebrate friendship in mini-reunion

PANAMA CITY BEACH — The cake said “60,” but the birthday girls acted more like they were going on 16.

Wine and memories were flowing on Sept. 18 at a rented house on Panama City Beach as fifteen friends from Rutherford High School’s Class of 1972 huddled for a second annual mini-reunion.

The gathering was orchestrated by Coni Whitfield Carney and Pam McCraney Jackson after the two had a revelation at the class’s last reunion.

“We were sitting at our 40^th reunion and talked about how ridiculous it is that we only see each other every five years,” Carney said.

The pair went to work planning a getaway to bring their widely scattered cluster of friends back together for a yearly rendezvous. This was the group’s second reunion that brought ladies to town from all directions within a 10-hour drive for a long weekend together.

This reunion marked a banner year for the former classmates: they all turned 60 this year. The bunch sat down to birthday cake and Gayle Yates Hoffman’s homemade lasagna to celebrate their friendship and having survived the shenanigans of their youth.

“I was the first kid in Ms. Henderson’s class to get the chicken pox and gave it to everyone else,” said Gloria Fuller Feeney. Three others ladies at the party were infected in the outbreak.

Some of the friends in attendance met when they started elementary school together in 1960. A few went through twelve years of grade school together on School Avenue, from Springfield Elementary to Everitt Middle and, finally, Rutherford High.

At that age, the girls kept in touch on the family rotary phone and enjoyed the rare treat of watching color television at a friend’s house. Today, they stay social through Facebook and email.

Times have certainly changed, but the memories are still making the friends smile.

“When I would spend the night at Gayle’s house, we had Cap’n Crunch every morning,” Carney said. “I can’t go down the cereal aisle without thinking about that now.”

The ladies reminisced about many other things, such as going to school in the era of racial tension, the Vietnam War and President Richard Nixon. They remember watching “Jaws” and “The Way We Were” in the movie theater and jamming out to Carole King, Cat Stevens and James Taylor.

Most of the ladies attended Rutherford when one of the most horrific incidents in the school’s history happened.

In 1971, several students from Bay High School killed Rutherford’s mascot, Rambunctious the Ram, just days before the rivals played in the Big Five Conference championship. Bay students broke into the pen where Rambunctious was kept, shaved him down and painted a big red “B” on him. The ram was found in his cage the next morning dead from what appeared to be a heart attack.

Rutherford students were devastated, but the football team took vengeance on the field and spanked the Bay Tornados with a 21-0 victory that year.

Although the classmates endured a fair share of turmoil, they had good times too. Some of the reunion was spent clucking about the hunks in their class.

“If you ever kissed a Wolf brother, raise your hand!” someone yelled. Half a dozen of them did.

Not every friend at the beach house was in each edition of the Rutherford yearbooks sprawled on the coffee table. The group was a hodgepodge of ladies who’d continuously been friends through school and others briefly acquainted with the Class of ‘72.

“This was my eighteenth school when I graduated from Rutherford,” said Debbi Inman, whose father was in the Air Force and stationed at Tyndall Air Force Base in 1972. “I was surprised at the friendship that was extended. They just accepted me into their little group.”

Rutherford students were accustomed to seeing Tyndall kids and other transplants come and go, but that didn’t stop them from forming strong bonds.

“When Marcy Crowe left at the beginning of the 11th grade, we took an annual and had it signed and mailed it to her in Tacoma, Washington,” said Judy Croft Bunch.

Carney said it didn’t matter whether the friends crossed the graduation stage together. Friends who shared that time in their lives would always feel like a part of the class.

Life has taken the friends in very different directions since high school. Some went on to be homemakers, and others had careers while raising their children.

As they celebrated turning 60, the group counted 40 grandchildren among them – and 25 past and present husbands.

The ladies said each still had the same aura about them that they did decades ago.

Gail Stansberry-Ziffer said her classmates hadn’t seemed to change much by the 10^th or even the 20^th class reunion. By the 30^th, it was different.

“As time goes by, people become more authentic,” she said. “Some of who we are now is who we were at 15 or 18. It goes full circle.”

Collectively, the ladies were thankful to have each other and the reunions to help rekindle their friendships.

“You come together and all those insecurities go away,” Stansberry-Ziffer said. “We’ve all been through love and loss and so many other experiences.”

Some of the friends at the beach house had not seen one another in decades, but said they picked up where they left off instantly.

“It’s almost like some of us were given a second chance to make those friends,” Carney said. “We’re not strangers.”

The ladies had a hard time saying good-bye after a reviving weekend of catching up and confiding in old friends.

“We’re all strong, and that’s what makes this group so special,” Inman said. “We’re able to share about the different stages we’ve had in our voyages.”

For this bunch, that meant talking late into the night about the ups and downs of marriage, careers, child-rearing and taking care of aging parents.

In fact, talking is what the ladies said younger kids today should do more of, instead of relying on text messages to keep their friendships on life support.

“Men come and go. Children come and go – and then they come back and go again,” Carney said. “But good friends are here to stay.”