Another classmate gone

  I graduated from the largest class that ever graduated from Hickory High School (officially known as Claremont Central) and am at the age when classmates passing away isn't that uncommon.  It seems ever three months I get an update on a classmate dying.  The latest one was a friend of mine.  We were not the best of friends.  I really only had one really close friend but we lost touch after we went off to college and he transferred to another school and then joined the Navy.  It seems no one knows what ever happened to him. 
  I had a secret crush on one girl who eventually married the guy that was always my rival for my position on the baseball team.  He became a big star for Lenoir-Rhyne College baseball.  He died a few years back and his widow has Altzimers.  It seems the people whom I was closed to are either dead or have not been heard from in many years.  I think that is strange. 
  Still, most of them had successful lives and long marriages to their first spouses, which speaks volumes about the different values we had growing up that generations since then.  I am just about the oldest member of my graduating class as I was born at that awkward stage where I would have had to start school at 5 in order to be with my age group.  In my junior and senior years of high school that age difference played to my advantage but that is a totally different story. 
 Even though I have only run into a couple of my old classmates throughout the years as I have never been to a reunion, I still miss them when they are gone.  Rest in peace dear friends.