Cranston High School East 1971 5-O Birthday Party!

September 13, 2003

The DeJesus Report:

The Hotel Viking is a nice place. I had never been there before Saturday night, but I'd like to visit again sometime,
after the turistas leave Newport and the prices drop. It certainly made a beautiful and elegant setting for the
Cranston East 1971 5-0 Birthday Party.

About 125 classmates - plus their guests - attended. At first, this seemed like a low percentage for a class of 720.
Then I thought about what it would have been like with double that number, or - heaven forbid - the whole class there.
As it was, we had plenty of elbow room to see and talk to people, and enough people so that there were plenty
who I was interested in touching base with, but not so many to be overwhelming.

As always, I enjoyed seeing people make connections, picking up the threads of conversations started years or
decades ago. The topics may have changed (no matter who I spoke with, we seemed to end up talking
about kids) but the interactions and friendships go on. Thanks to the miracle of email and chat rooms, many people
were also meeting new friends face-to-face for the first time. The drink (good!) and food (better!) and conversation (best!)
flowed easily.

The birthday theme appeared throughout the night. Everyone's name tags identified them as a birthday guest.
Many people brought gifts, which were exchanged anonymously later in the evening. The ones I saw - record albums
from the '70s, lava lamp, birthday hat - seemed very appropriate. We shared birthday cake for 200, and I somehow found
myself singing an off-key rendition of "Happy Birthday", despite the able assistance of Pat Giarrusso, Dianne Centofante Miller,
and Pat Dewey Giarrusso. (We also had a great band that played "our" kind of music, attracting many to the dance
floor without overpowering conversation.)

People were kind enough to thank me for my role in planning the Party. The real ones to thank are listed below.
My actual part has mainly been sending emails, and keeping names and addresses straight. Since I
spend 95% of my life in front of a computer anyway, I'm glad to do this.

Besides those listed here, I'm most grateful to the people who showed up, some from great distances (I think
Peter Theodoroff was the winner there). Despite all the things everyone is busy with, a lot of nice people made
the effort to make their way to Newport, find a parking place (quite an achievement that night), and join together to
celebrate each other's birthday. We've all had to deal with the challenges of life for 50 years: I'm glad to have friends like these
to help me along the way.

I'd like to extend special thanks to:
Dan Barry: all the behind-the-scenes effort to find a good location, investigate possible venues, research menus,
negotiate terms, finance the whole shebang, pay the bills, send out the mailings, and act as central info exchange
Pat Giarrusso: handling all the returns and money and mailings and ...
Pat Dewey Giarrusso and Maryann Pezza Matano: about a million phone calls, plus mailings
Dianne Centofante Miller: phone calls, decisions, decorations, and finding the band
Gail Glen Whitfield: decorations
Ernie Sutcliffe: great web site, finding missing classmates, running chat room
Bob Avakian, Brenda Pandozzi D'Aguanno, Dan Deery, Beverly Brisson DeFelice, Helen Dittelman Dolan,
John Dyer, Candy Williams Gauvin, Jakki Kougasian Horan, Lauren Goding Johnson, John Kennedy, Corrine
Kilpeck, Joe Ricci, Sue Bruno Sovis, Lynne Freedman Turkus, Rhonda Port Walker, Phil Winsor,
Debbie Boutin Yarbrough: calling hundreds of complete strangers all over the country in the hope of finding some of
our missing classmates - and finding many!
Beverly Brisson DeFelice, Cosima Fallon, Pamela Pinskey Fernandes, Martha Robitaille Galeota,
Linda DiMuccio Pontarelli, Lynne Freedman Turkus: helping out with last-minute details
Carol Myron: taking lots of pictures

Thank you!

Ed DeJesus
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PHOTOS:

Lots of great photos have been submitted by:
Carol Myron, Nancy Goldis Langford, Lynne Freedman Turkus, Bruce Brailsford and Candace Williams

Check out photos by clicking ALBUM 1 (15 photos) or ALBUM 2 (22 photos) or ALBUM 3 (14 photos)
or ALBUM 4 (20 photos) or ALBUM 5 (11 photos) or ALBUM 6 (12 photos) or ALBUM 7 (23 photos)

I'll try to organize them a little better in the future but for now I just put them up in random albums.

Ernie Sutcliffe

Its over! But you can still check out the official invitation by clicking HERE.