Milt Quan, 1952

“Did you ever think you’d live this long?” Milt laughed.  “Or be married this long?” he added.  “Or so many times?” I said.  And we laughed some more.  Actually — Milt and Anita have been married 63 years now.  I’m the one who’s been married several times.  But to Nyel, a respectable 33 years, now, I must add.

We laugh a lot when we talk, Milt and I.  In fact, Milton Quan’s conversations with most people involve a lot of smiling and laughing.  Always have.  We’ve known each other since the first week of our Freshman year at San Rafael High School, class of ’53. We were talking — he from Fresno, me from Oysterville — because another of our classmates has recently died.  Not just a “classmate” — one of “our group.”  Nancy Stone, my friend since 8th Grade at E Street Grammar School.  Both Milt and I got to say “goodbye” to her and for that we are glad.

Nancy Stone, 1952

There were nine or ten of us– six SRHS friends and four spouses — who began getting together every year (at least) in the mid-seventies.  We had been in touch, loosely, for the years before that, but just about the time I moved to Oysterville permanently, we began to be serious about our “mini-reunions.”  We took turns with the “where.”  Santa Rosa, Bodega Bay, Fresno, Oysterville, Lake Tahoe and, once, Hawaii where Neil still owns a second home.

At some of our get-togethers we “did” something special.  In Fresno we went to the Forestiere Underground Gardens —  a series of subterranean structures built by a Sicilian immigrant over a forty year period, from 1906 to his death in 1946.  Another time, also in Fresno, we went to a Fortune Teller.  In Oysterville, everyone came to help host one of our Croquet and  Champagne Galas — I think that one was to benefit the Oysterville Church.  In Kona we went to the Ocean Rider Seahorse Farm and, of course, at Tahoe we checked out a casino or two.

Neil MacPhail, 1952

But. mostly, we  caught up and reminisced  — about high school ski trips and dances and the King Cotton Drive-In and going out for midnight rowboat rides at China Camp.  And we laughed.  Of the high school group — Nan Jenkins, Neil MacPhail, Joey Bruner, Nan Stone, Milt Quan, and me,  only Milt, Neil and I are left.  And, of the spouses, Anita Farley Quan, Kent Sibbald, Nyel Stevens and Jack Russell — only Anita and Nyel are still with us.

“We’ve got to get together one last time,” Milt said.  “Nyel’s been talking about a Road Trip,” I told him.  We left it at that.  I hope it happens… Maybe this summer?

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