Brunswick High classmates of 1969 revisit their former school

BRUNSWICK, Ohio -- A half-century. Sounds like forever when you say it, but when you’ve lived it and have come back to your class reunion, those 50 years seem to have flown.

That’s what members of the Brunswick High School Class of 1969 found when a group of them gathered to tour the high school from which they graduated. It’s a far different place than they remember.

Principal Keith Merrill and Lee Ann Petry, assistant principal, greeted the alumni at the center entrance -- which didn’t exist in 1969. Both Merrill and Petry are alumni of Brunswick, so they were eager to help the 69’ers learn about how much their alma mater has changed.

The class was the second to graduate from the “new” high school -- what is now known as the West House. Merrill explained where walls and offices and classrooms would have been back then, while showing the technological advances being used in today’s rooms.

He explained that the East House of the high school was built in the late 1970s and the buildings were joined together -- the Center -- in 1981. About 2,300 students are enrolled now. This year’s graduating class was 644, while the class of 1969 -- considered one of the largest at the time -- had about 250.

The grads seemed very interested in how students can now attend high school and college at the same time, and that they all have laptops that they carry with them all the time.

When they visited the gymnasium, they lined up along the wall to watch a girls volleyball practice. When the current students heard who the guests were, they gave them a round of applause.

The reunion continued that evening at the Brunswick Eagles Club, with everyone hoping they could get together more often even though they live all around the United States.

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