2003 Stark Class of 1973

Here are a couple of the photos. If you want a cd with all 80 or so photos, just ask and it's yours.

Love Train

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"It has been my experience that age brings few gifts, but one of them is the acceptance that the past is the past, for good or bad, and if you are fortunate enough to have lived in an era that was truly exceptional, characterized by music, chopped-down Fords with chrome-plated engines roaring full out against purple sunsets, and drive-in restaurants where kids jitterbugged and did the dirty bop and knew they would never die, then those moments are forever inviolate, never to be shared or explained, and, like images of a Grecian urn, never subject to time and decay. Why make them less by trying to re-create them?"
-- James Lee Burke, "Crusader's Cross", pub. 2005

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A song called "Absent Friends" by Dick Feller, with help from Lewis Grizzard:

Now and then, I run into
Some boyhood friend of mine
And we tell those old war stories
And recall the ol' times
And we point to our middles
And we laugh about our hair
And we say we should get together soon,
But we never say when or where

(Chorus)
'Cause you know how grown men are
Afraid to touch,
We love each other from afar
But the rhymes of the children
Become the dreams of old men,
And I have loved you dearly
My absent friends

(Bridge)
They say time moves like molasses when you are children
But it rages like a river when you're grown
But the love of the pals of my childhood
Remains the truest love I've ever known

(repeat chorus)
But you know how grown men are
Afraid to touch
We love each other from afar
But the rhymes of the children
Become the dreams of old men
And I have loved you dearly
My absent friends.

(spoken)
And, so tonight, I lift a glass to all my absent friends.

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There's gonna be two dates on your tombstone
all your friends will read 'em
but all that's gonna matter
is that little dash between 'em

                 -Kevin Welch
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