It all began one day as I, Nancy Lurvey, was eating lunch in a restaurant in Los Angeles. A young man came over and asked if he could share my table, as the place was exceedingly crowded. We soon struck up a conversation in which he informed me that he was traveling to New York, where he planned to board an airplane for Germany. He explained that he was a diplomat and was going there on official business.
I at once became eager to continue the conversation, as I had been to Germany myself. I told him this, and he said that he had lived there about ten years ago. Well, you know how you compare different places when you have mutual interests. It took little time to discover that we had both graduated from the same school in Germany, and that he was none other than George Cleaver. This was really a grand occasion.
I told George I was also flying to New York on business. I said that I was a buyer for a department store in Los Angeles and that I was going to New York to view a large style show. We planned to meet the next day and leave for New York.
During the first part of the flight, we learned, quite by accident, that our air line hostess was our old classmate, Angie Magliochetti. She told us that Dick Markham was in San Francisco, and that he was a commercial pilot. During our stop-over in San Francisco, we, of course, looked him up and had a wonderful reunion.
It seemed that wherever we went, we met some old friends who knew where we could locate the rest of the class of 1952.
In San Antonio we met Ellen Futch, who is the wife of an army officer. We also met David Page and Ray Trapp, who were both army officers stationed there.
We found that many of our classmates were working in the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota; so we stopped there to see them. Janus Jones, Winona Caraway, Pauline Worthington, and Kathy Airaudi are nurses there and really doing a splendid job. The noted psychologist there is Bob Giuliano. We met Dawn Helmer, who is a doctor of medicine, just as she was coming out of the lecture room.
We were told that if we went to Ohio, we could find Wally Jones. After landing in Columbus, it didn't take us long to locate one of the best known psychiatrists in Ohio. Wally introduced us to the best doctor at the hospital, who was Bill Willis.
George and I knew that we could locate many of our old classmates in Washington, D.C.; so we made it our next stop. Beverly Willis was doing a remarkable job in the State Department; Stanley Gappa was working in the Pentagon and had a swell secretary - Joan Kohlman, of course.
Meg Andreas was also in Washington, where she enjoys a career as an interior decorator. We weren't too surprised when we were received by Meg's receptionist, Marilyn L. Nelson. They told us where to find Jinny Hadfield, so we took a taxi over to her office. Jinny is a commercial artist, no less!
We located Jeannie Nelson in Washington, too. She is also the wife of an army officer. We saw Pat Skelly, who is practicing chemical engineering in the Navy. With him was Stan Mason, also in the Navy.
We flew to New York that same day and continued our hunt for our classmates. I knew Barbara Vaughn was there, as she is a buyer, also. Through her, we located almost all the rest of the class. Dick Smith is a popular dentist there in one of the large clinics. We also found Tom Ruley practicing in this clinic.
It didn't take long to locate Frances Snead and Ramona Hatfield, whose pictures appear on many fashion magazines. Why did their hair look so nice? Their beautician is Beattie Owens.
Since George's plane did not leave for a few hours, we decided to fly up to Yale University, where Carl Peterson is a professor of history. The Yale coach is Mike Clower. They have a good team there, no doubt.
We had only one more person to locate, and that was Marie Coleman. We finally found her in Bosto, where she is a beautician.
This completed our search for the class of 1952. The members were all doing fine and were prominent citizens. Of course, this was to be expected from graduates on Nurnberg High School.
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