MIDWEST CITY — In the fall of 1963, the Beach Boys recorded “Be True to Your School,” which would become one of their biggest hits, and the song's meaning is something the Midwest City class of 1964 loves.
That class — which numbered 499 graduates — will mark its 50th anniversary with a three-day celebration starting Friday. The reunion is a chance to catch up, but the class also hopes to give something back to the school that was the scene of the class members' teenage years.
“We started with two concepts, one was the Beach Boys song, which we defined as reconnecting with the school in a meaningful way during our 50th anniversary and combining it with a project that would benefit the school,” reunion committee member Barbara Sessions. he said.
This project is a reimagining of the current Midwest City High School museum located on the high school campus. This museum was opened in 2001 but needs renovation.
Digital yearbooks
“Right now, the museum has a lot of items in it, like yearbooks that are falling apart,” said committee member Chaniece Harkey. “Our hope is to restore and digitize them so they can be preserved forever.”
Several items have already been replaced, including some shelves. But there is much more work to be done.
Two members of the class of 1964 helped design a revamped museum. Tony Callaway has made his living as an architect. He helped design the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas, which chronicles the assassination of John F. Kennedy. He has lent his expertise to a complete redesign of the Midwest City museum.
Marty Thompson served as librarian at the OU Health and Sciences Center in Oklahoma City and has already helped preserve some of the museum's artifacts.
“It's a shame that we have two members of our class who have skills that are so directly applicable to this project,” Sessions said.
About 160 people are expected for the reunion. Sessions said money left over from the reunification fund would go toward renovating the museum. The team also hopes other classes will step forward and help.
“When the museum opened, it was really the result of people from the classes of the 1940s and 1950s stepping in and putting it together,” he said. “Now we see it's our time to contribute to that and bring in lessons from the 70s, 80s and 90s as well. We plan to continue meeting to work on this for years to come.”
Within the framework of the meeting, there will also be a laying of wreaths. Twenty-one Midwest City high school students were killed in Vietnam, including five from the class of 1964. Sessions is thinking about those who died most often as the reunion approaches.
“America's Model City”
A wreath-laying ceremony will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday on the campus of Midwest City High School.
“We graduated together and before they turned 22, they were dead,” Sessions said. “That's what we think about more than anything 50 years later, all the life they didn't get to live.”
Harkey said the losses had an impact on the category in subsequent years.
“I knew two of them very well,” he said. “Midwest City was a small town back then. It was America's model city.
“We went out of town every now and then, but mostly stayed in our area. I've known some of these people in our class since grade school, and when you lose someone so young in war, it has a lasting impact.”
