FORT LORAMIE — It was June 1946.
The worst world conflict in history had ended the year before. The country was beginning to bustle with industrial, agricultural and commercial progress. And in Fort Loramie, 33 high school seniors prepared to go through graduation exercises.
They rented their black caps and gowns. They thought about their class motto, “In ourselves our future.” And a teacher, Mr. Delahaye, lined up the class for a walk to the church nearby.
“We headed over to the church to say the rosary,” said Norbert Holthaus, looking back across 70 years. “Delahaye clamped me on the shoulder and said, ‘You’ll lead the rosary.’ I didn’t know how to do that.” Holthause remembered being flustered, worried, thinking, “What am I going to do?”
“I hung back and we all got there and Les,” he pointed across a table with a gesture, still grateful seven decades later, to Lester Brandewie, now of Celina, “Les started in and saved me. That was the biggest scare of my high school life,” Holthaus, now of Wapakoneta, laughed.
He recounted the story to 16 fellow alumni and their guests during a reunion at Brucken’s Neighborhood Pub in Fort Loramie, Tuesday, to celebrate the 70th anniversary of their graduation.
The event was organized by Al Hoying, of New Bremen, with assistance by Holthaus and Helen Council, of Greenville.
Brandewie had his own stories to tell. A tall man with an infectious smile, he bespeaks the basketball player he once was.
“Our sophomore class had a real good basketball team,” he said. “We matched up with the seniors and we beat those guys.” He was denied the chance to say he’d been on a championship team, though.
“When we had our best team, there was a gas shortage. They canceled our district tournament,” Brandewie said.
Lester Kemper, of Celina, was denied the chance to play at all.
“I was a bench-warmer,” he laughed. “I was too short.” The coach would tell him, “We can’t lower the basket just for you.”
Hoying wasn’t into sports, although Brandewie did his best to get Hoying onto the baseball team. He took Hoying to the field and got the pitcher to throw a few balls.
“He pitched, I ducked and that was enough baseball for me,” Hoying chuckled.
The reunited friends, most of them now 88 years old, enjoyed easy camaraderie and shared long-cherished memories.
Mary Boerger Connair, who had traveled from West Des Moines, Iowa, for the luncheon, had, with the help of a librarian, tracked down a particular poem she knew she had heard as a first-grader.
“Four words just kept going through my head,” she said: “The goldenrod is yellow.” Turns out, the words are the first line of “September” by Helen Hunt Jackson. Connair read the whole poem to the assembled group, several of whom also remembered it from their childhoods.
The class had numbered 41 when they came together as freshmen, many of them having completed their early schooling in one-room schoolhouses with names like Walkup, Hopewell and Sherman. Eight class members left the school before graduation. Cousins Rosemary Hilgefort Heitkamp, of McCartyville, and Mary Hilgefort Schmiesing, of rural Fort Loramie, were among them.
“We left in 1944 (when they turned 16) to work on the farm,” Heitkamp said. That was not at all unusual in 1946.
“I always thought I was lucky,” said Vera Seger Thaman, of Botkins. “There were eight children in my family. My younger sister and I were the first ones to graduate in my family. I was happy that I could go to graduation.”
Although she had studied a business course in high school, Thaman got a job in a factory after graduation. She married in 1948.
None of the classmates married each other.
“The girls all had boyfriends who were older, already out of school a year or two,” said Hoying. “They’d come back for the prom.”
The class colors were blue and white. Its flower was an American Beauty rose.
Other classmates attending the reunion were Mary Poeppelman Hoying, of Fort Loramie, who proudly told the group about her grandson, Jared Hoying, a center fielder with the Texas Rangers; Norma Siegel Bergman, of Newport; Vern Eilerman, of Minster; Harold Harrod, of Rossburg; Martha Zimmerman Koenig, of Botkins; Ruth Boerger Dabbelt, of New Bremen; Treva Zimmerman Barhorst, of Minster; Jeanette Albers Weaver, of Minster; Pauline Quinter Kohler, of Botkins; and Bennie Arkenberg, of Fort Loramie. Guests were Joan Hoying, Vera Eilerman, Larry Thaman, Marlene Harrod, Carol Williams, Evelyn Kemper and Theresa Arkenberg.
Classmates James Freytag, Herbert Fleckenstein and Barbara Fite Kuck did not attend.
Holthaus read the names of 13 deceased classmates and asked his fellow alumni to remember them. They were Paul J. Barlage, Lawrence Bender, Alfred Bollheimer, Ruth Busse Geise, Edward Freytag, Paul W. Raterman, Virginia Schafer Brandewie, Valunta Bornhorst Buehler, Doris Keifer, Patricia Kirner Wyen, Joseph Schwartz, Alfred Gaier and Orville Larger.
