Masconomet Regional High School 50th Reunion
Mark and Barbara Fredrickson
The idea took shape a year earlier during a Zoom call among ten high school friends who had stayed in touch through all the years.
With their 50th reunion approaching, the conversation turned to bringing the class together. Barbara Fredrickson and her husband Mark offered to help, and a 13-member planning committee soon started work to try and create a reunion experience their classmates would cherish.
For the Fredricksons, the connections extend well beyond graduation. They grew up in Topsfield, met at Masco and have been married 45 years. A few years ago, they moved back to their hometown to be near their four children and 14 grandchildren around the North Shore.
The “Team50” committee created “Reunion Weekend” to give classmates multiple ways to reconnect: a gathering the night before the reunion at Alfalfa Farm Cellars, a school tour led by Masco Principal Kathleen DiNardo, the reunion itself at Commons 1854 in Topsfield, a round of golf at New Meadows (canceled by rain), and a Meredith Farm trail walk led by classmate Jim Gilford of Gil’s Grocery. Months of work by committee members finding classmates and updating contact information resulted in the largest turnout of any reunion this class had ever had.
“We knew that being the Bicentennial class was our unique thing,” Fredrickson says. The committee used the red, white, and blue graduation tassels in its reunion graphics and paired imagery from 1976 and America’s 250th anniversary on a stage banner. Posters invited attendees to revisit Senior Frolics, sports and the events of 1976, and see where classmates have dispersed on a map showing where they live today.
“While conversations filled the room, we had a playlist in the background with the most memorable songs from our era,” he says.
A photographer gathered classmates for a balcony-view group photo and smaller hometown groups, while a memorial display honored 41 classmates with their yearbook photographs.
A Class With Its Own History
Fredrickson’s remarks brought together the humor, history and perspective of returning after half a century:
We have much to be grateful for but there is some sadness that goes along with this stage of life. We remember 41 classmates who are no longer with us on this earth and we miss them tonight.
Masco first opened when we were infants — September 1959. The population of our three small towns more than doubled during the 1950s, and they built a campus that could grow.
We had free-range childhoods – just be home for dinner. Dangerous playground equipment. Pond hockey without helmets, and every sport on fields and playgrounds without adults. We drank from the garden hose and learned to swim in rivers and ponds. We pulled a 20-foot tangled telephone cord around three corners to get a shred of teenage privacy.
We were pioneers in streaking. No streaking tonight, OK? We had a big smoking area on that patio near the Masco front office. We had undefeated soccer teams, won the league in hockey and hardly noticed that Joe Casey, our boys basketball coach, started a girls cross-country program that he would coach for 48 years.
We came together for Senior Frolics and had an absolute blast. We had Masco’s first ABC students graduate with our class, commuting from the inner city every day, and I’ll always remember how welcoming our classmates were to those newcomers.
And we were the bicentennial class, graduating as America turned 200. The first to wear red, white & blue tassels on our caps. 339 graduated in our class, and more than a third of those still living are here tonight.
If the people in this room rekindle friendships or form relationships that last, all the work will have been worth it.
50 years ago, we were starting our futures and worried about what comes next.
Tonight, we’re mostly worried about remembering where we parked. Enjoy!