Like No Time Had Passed

As Carole Stevens Mattingly thinks about her 65th Lamar High School reunion, she’s quiet for a minute (an unusual state for the engaging, talkative Carole).

“I am kind of just overcome with emotion about it,” she says. “I don’t know that there are a lot of people out there who go all the way to their 65th reunion.” She stops to think for another minute. “Well, I just think it’s pretty special to make it this far.”

Such was the sentiment for some 100 classmates and spouses who attended the reunion in April, a month after Lamar celebrated its 85th year with a big open house complete with food trucks, school tours, and dance, cheer, and choir performances. When they graduated, the class of ’58 had 563 students.

Gus Comiskey Jr., founder of Comiskey Kaufman Consulting, has been heading up the tight-knit class’s reunions since they began with their 10th in 1968. “Way back in 1967, they just called some of us to come to a meeting,” Carole remembers. “It was a weekend, and I was pregnant. Some of the people were good friends, some weren’t.” 

But through many reunions and even more planning meetings, they’ve all become friends. “If we didn’t know each other in high school, it doesn’t matter,” Carole says. To help her old classmates out when they began planning their 60th reunion, Carole says she blew up a picture of herself from the yearbook and wore it to a meeting on a ribbon around her neck. “Some people you saw around school, but you never really knew. And some people will remember your young face, but your old one won’t register,” she laughs.

After the 60th there was a little uncertainty about counting on a 65th. “When we had the wrap-up meeting,” Carole says, “everyone started talking and saying, ‘Well, what do y’all think? Do we try to have a 65th?’ Then somebody said, ‘How many of you have parents who lived to their 90s or 100?’ I raised my hand, and several others did, and we said there’s our committee for the next one!”

Senior class officers Kathy Sangster, Chris Brown, Mary Sue Hanks, Ron Woliver, with Ron's signature (Ronnie Woliver) in Carole Stevens' yearbook.

Held at The Forest Club and followed by a tour of Lamar High School, the “next one” was a big success. “It’s a wonderful feeling to be able to renew old friendships,” says Ron Woliver, a petrochemical consultant and president of the class of ’58. “There was one fella I played football with. Then, of course, there were people I had gone to elementary school with, ladies and guys. There were several I went all the way through with. To put that whole thing together was really wonderful.”

Ron continues: “Julie Hodges [one of 16 members of the planning committee] has to get a huge, big, triple star for putting together a reunion for hundreds of people to show up to,” he says. “It was extremely well done, and an event I will never forget. I’m so glad I was there to see it. Time is moving on.”

Gus Comiskey adds emphatically: “Having a 65th reunion is an indication of long-term friendships.”

Those friendships extend beyond reunions and between the milestone five-year markers. 

David Redford, a Lamar ’58 graduate and an attorney, sends reminder emails to a group of classmates for monthly get-togethers. “We go to Memorial Park and Becks Prime, and we’ll gather there,” Ron says. “There might be six of us, might be 12. We’ll come and go, but it’s a way to continue to meet together and dialogue with our old friends. Being with guys like David, and Jack Whitten, and Gus Comiskey, being around these super-achiever people helps those of us who aren’t super-achievers,” Ron quips.

Looking back on his time at Lamar, Ron is grateful. “Lamar High School was a turning point of positivity in my life,” he says. “My mother and father divorced when I was very young. My Lamar counselor, Mrs. Goodrich, played a tremendously important role in my life. She asked me if I had heard of Georgia Tech. The long and short of that story is that she pointed me in that direction, I got into the school with a scholarship, and it turned out to be a great way for me to get away from the war in my family. That was the war between the Aggies and the Longhorns.”

Classmate Eleanor Powers Beebe also praises the teachers and staff. “We had very, very, very fine teachers,” she remembers. “This was a time when women had basically three choices – you could be a nurse, you could be a teacher, or you could be a secretary. We had a captive audience of women teachers who today would be bankers or CEOs, but they were teachers, and they were good.”

Eleanor was one of many – 30, maybe – classmates who went on to Rice University. She became a French teacher and then stayed at home to raise her children. “A very high percentage of our class went on to college,” Carole says. “Now this is 1958. A lot of people from that generation, their parents did not go to college. So for many of these kids, they were the first generation to go.”

Jo Ann Dougall Levering says that because of Lamar, “I was able to attend Duke University and go on to be one of two women in a class of 400 men at The University of Texas Law School. And the girl friends I made at Lamar are still close friends, 65 years later.” Jo Ann adds that she has been a part of her class reunion committees since “day one,” for their 10th. She sat out of the planning sessions this year because of failing eyesight.

Julie Shaw Hodges specifically remembers her favorite English teacher, Evelyn Ford. “I loved her class,” Julie says. “She always told us how hard the English language was and that someday she was going to write her own dictionary! When my first husband died 30 years after my graduation, one of the first phone calls I received was from Mrs. Ford. We had not kept in touch, but somehow she remembered me, made the connection, and called me – personally.”

Julie says her carpool group remained the same from River Oaks Elementary through Lamar. “Believe it or not, we still meet for lunch every few months,” she says of Ann Rendleman Mather, Martha Smith Smith, Roberta Williams Terrell, Mary Lib Iiams, and herself. “Mary Lib died years ago,” Julie says, “but the rest of us meet quite frequently.” 

“It always seemed to me that there were a lot of very successful leaders who came out of Lamar,” Eleanor says. “Our former mayor Fred Hofheinz, Governor Mark White, a city attorney, there was a Miss Texas, Marilyn Turner, who was a straight-A student.” David Redford is quick to remember Mark White as their “most famous classmate,” who eventually became, in David’s opinion, “the best education governor in Texas history.”

Eleanor Powers Beebe, Kathy Sangster, Carole Stevens Mattingly, and Gail Adler chat. (Photo: Katy Anderson Photography)

Looking back,” Eleanor says, “what strikes me is how many organizations there were on campus. Everybody had something. Everybody was secretary of this, president of that. There were clubs for the writers, a debate club, a drama club led by Ruth Denney, who later went on to start HSPVA and basically discovered Tommy Tune [a Lamar graduate of the same generation]. We had the singing groups Choralettes and Lamar Lears, astronomy club, I could go on and on. We had social service clubs, a lot like sororities, and we had so many formal dinner dances at the country clubs. We had dances all the time. We had hayrides, we had barn dances, there was something to go to every week. We did a lot of dancing.

“It was a happy time. We did have the atomic bomb over our heads, but aside from that, people were busy, and people in the community reported on you if you misbehaved. Oh, if you misbehaved, they knew it, and the teachers would call your parents. In loco parentis.”

Eleanor takes pause as she remembers the school being segregated. “We were not even aware of how hurtful that was,” she says. “We were not aware of what we were doing, that we were doing damage to someone.”

The times were a mix of highs and lows. “We were not at war, but we did have the civil rights movement, which was very difficult,” Carole says. “But we [also] grew up in a really fun time. Our generation created rock and roll.”

Carole has fond memories of lunches with Eleanor and their friend Kathy Sangster, all still dear friends. “I can remember sitting outside under the trees having lunch,” Carole says. “Back then, we had these full, gathered skirts, and we wore petticoats made of crinoline underneath, and you starched them. Some people had really stiff petticoats – I guess their mothers knew how to do it up! But we would arrange those skirts in a circle around us so we could sit on the lawn under the trees. We were on the only street in Houston with a country club at both ends of the street.”

Carole also remembers leaving campus was off limits. “We weren’t supposed to go to the River Oaks Drugstore, but they sold cokes there. Once in a while, some brave soul would say Okay, give me your money and I’ll go get some cokes. You were very spottable on that walk across Westheimer. I wasn’t about to take that chance, but I did give money to people who did!”

Everyone was full of stories at the reunion. “Seeing everyone was really fun,” Eleanor says. “I stood in the food line with a couple I knew. Both of them went to Lamar; they were high school sweethearts. I had good memories of being in our trig class with her. And then a girl I carpooled with, now our husbands are good friends and we’ve happened to keep up that way. The people who stayed in Houston, I run into them quite a bit.

“We’re just happy to be here,” she adds. “We are so blessed to have good health and to see our friends in good health. I don’t think we ever thought we’d live this long, but people are still hiking, I’m still playing tennis, others are traveling the world. It’s just a wonderful group of people.”