Update: Historic grad class celebrates 50th reunion

Update Sept. 30

The Eagles Hall in Vernon was bursting its walls with fifty years of memories on Saturday evening.

The Vernon Senior Secondary School Grad Class of 1969 held its 50 year reunion with over 100 attendees, and from the sounds of it, everyone had a great time.

“The Class of ’69 brought all the love of that year into the room on Saturday evening. We are all still floating. Our cheeks hurt from smiling so much. Our hearts are still soaring.There were countless hugs. It just doesn’t get better than that,” said ’69 Grad Teresa Andrews, one of the organizers.

The organizers did a wonderful job. The best part of the gathering was truly all the love and affection in the room. We are a caring bunch and we were so happy to see one another. Special salute to John Trainor for his hilarious stories about the pranksters that year,” Andrews told Vernon Matters.

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Original story

Neil Armstrong became the first person to set foot on the moon.

The Beatles Abby Road was released.

Pierre Trudeau was Canada’s Prime Minister.

Sugar Sugar by the Archies was the number one song, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was the top movie.

The year was 1969, which is also when the first Grade 12 class graduated from the new Vernon Senior Secondary School (VSSS), which back then had an extra ‘s’ in its name.

Members of the ’69 grad class are gathering in Vernon this weekend for a 50th anniversary reunion.

About 112 class members are expected for a meet and greet at the Eagles Hall Saturday evening.

One of the organizers is Teresa Andrews, who says the 1969 class totalled about 300 students.

“What do I remember? I remember the awe of being at the community centre (Vernon Recreation Centre) for our grad, and we were such a big class, that it was something to get us all through the process. We were the first class in the high school. We would have had Grade 10 and 11 in Polson Park at [Vernon High School, which became] Fulton Secondary,” Andrews told Vernon Matters.

Former Member of Parliament Len Marchand was the keynote address speaker at the grad ceremony which Andrews says was “amazing and so inspirational.”

Andrews remembers one interesting part of the new school’s design.

“They had created the building without windows which was pretty bizarre. I assume they thought we were going to concentrate [on school] better, overlooking the fact that we were boys and girls and we had hormones, so it didn’t really matter if we had windows or not.”

Andrews reflects back on what Vernon was like 50 years ago.

“In many ways it was such an easy era. Every Saturday there was a dance at the Legion Hall. It was a tremendously musical, fun time. The music was really a big part of 1969 for all of us. We really did this thing called ‘mainers’ where the guys drove their cars up and down (30th Ave., main street). The Okanagan Cafe (by former Adams drug store and Harris Flower Shop), you always had your chips and gravy and a vanilla coke there.”

Andrews says CJIB Radio, predecessor of the current 107.5 Beach Radio, was “the centre of the students’ universe” in 1969.

“We had Randy Seabrook and Jimmy Yount playing the tunes for us, and we phoned in. That was the era of phoning in your requests for guys you went to school with. Your romance life was pretty much connected to whether Jimmy played the song or not. CJIB was incredibly important,” she said.

The reunion was put together over about six weeks, and was kept simple.

“It’s that whole thing about the class of ’69 being a little spaced out. Debbie Sigalet didn’t get a hold of me until August to say ‘Are we going to do this? This is our 50th year,'” Andrews said. “We’re going to have appetizers, and a bar, and lots of good ’60s music, and just let it be kind of casual.”

Other organizers are Judy Inglis, Colleen Corner and Ed Forslund.

“There’s probably been a half dozen who have done some little things to make the night just a little bit better,” Andrews added.

Vernon Senior Secondary (VSSS) for Grade 11 and 12 students became Vernon Secondary School (VSS) in 1985, providing classes for Grade 8 to 12

The original school was torn down and replaced with a new school in 2013.