John Johnson spoke to the hungry reunionees on Saturday 7/22/17 at Haab's Restaurant. Following is the text of that history-laden, heartfelt, tributary, and, yes, pretentious speech.

RHS Class of ’67 50th Reunion Speech

Two score and a decade ago, our fathers and mothers watched their special children graduate from a unique experiment that was the Lab School. We were very lucky to be a part of this experiment because it afforded us an excellent education and because it was small. In many cases, small schools are at a disadvantage because their resources are limited, but Roosevelt had the resources of Eastern Michigan University to back it up.

In 1849, nigh a hundred years before most of us were born, Michigan State Normal School was founded to train people to be teachers. In 1900, the school instituted Normal High School, which started holding classes for 9th graders in the south wing of the Main College Building where Pierce Hall now stands. Through the years more grades were added and, in 1925, the Normal High School moved to a new building named for Theodore Roosevelt, who, of course, was the president of the United States from 1901 to 1909.

Calvin Coolidge was the president in 1925 when the new school was built. Although Calvin might have done some good things as president, he was way below Teddy on the excitement scale. I know I, for one, am happy I’m a Roosevelt Rough Rider instead of a Coolidge Lawyer.

Our Roosevelt was a small island surrounded and supported by a sea of education. EMU used the school to test new educational concepts. Remember CORE class with Mr. Tomczak? What was that? I can’t remember. Fortunately, we escaped before new math came along. Well, actually, I do remember Miss Rankin (or was it Mr. Welper?) describing set theory, so perhaps we did learn new math without the pretentious moniker.

The other function of a lab school was to introduce student teachers to standing at the front of the classroom. We got pretty good at evaluating student teachers and quickly exploiting their weaknesses, didn’t we? I wonder how many of them abandoned their planned careers in education after leaving Roosevelt in tears?

However, some of these student teachers arrived with sound techniques for controlling the classroom. The beautiful Miss Maslin is the one I always think about in this context. She would enter the classroom in a short skirt and sit atop the front of the teacher’s desk—causing the noisy half of the classroom’s students to quiet down immediately.

The regular teachers at Roosevelt were quite a collection of characters. Because Roosevelt was a small school, many of them taught multiple subjects, and you might see the same teacher in class more than once a day. I’d see Miss Cooper in both Latin and Social Studies classes. Such close relationships between student and teacher are unheard of today. I believe we also benefited greatly from the low student-to-teacher ratio.

The small size of our classes and the small number of students at Roosevelt meant that everybody knew who everybody else was. Of course, as in every school, there were cliques; groups of friends who shared closer relationships. Reading the biographical stories that some classmates submitted for the reunion website made me realize how little I knew about some of the people with whom I shared my teenage years. I regret not getting to know all my classmates better.

So here we are, 50 years after graduating from a great high-school and 30 years after our previous reunion, gathering again to remember the old stories and tell new ones. There were three people who helped make this gathering possible: Charlotte Osborn was a super-sleuth with a special skill for finding classmates I couldn’t find. Sally Foster made and sent post cards and made phone calls to help pressure the people she and Charlotte located to attend the reunion.

Most of all I want to thank my incredible wife, Mary. She went way, way above and beyond by agreeing to host Thursday’s party at our house, making the food for that party, making the complicated photo-name tags, and checking people in at Bona Sera last night. Most amazingly, Mary dusted every single one of the hundreds and hundreds of science-fiction toys on the endless shelves of my “man cave,” which my first girlfriend, Jody, was heard to re-label, “boy cave.” My wife, Mary, is the best and my writing skills are insufficient to express it any better than that.

My great fear was that I would decide to throw a party and nobody would come. It was tough to get such a late start on this thing and hope that the randomly selected date would mesh with everyone’s schedules. But I’ve been massively rewarded by the turnout for this reunion.

I would like to thank three attendees in particular. Bonnie’s daughter had been waiting for more than a year for a double-organ transplant donor. Bonnie couldn’t commit to coming while that life-threatening sword of Damoclese hung over her family’s head. Then the call came, the transplant surgery was successful, and Bonnie’s family took over the incredible care-giving Bonnie has been providing and made it possible for her to join us. I want to thank the doctors at Duke, and the wonderful family Bonnie anchors for enabling her to be here.

Another attendee, who went the extra mile, but couldn’t be here tonight, is Sharon. To be a part of this reunion, Sharon flew from her home in Colorado to spend two evenings showing off how she hasn’t aged a day since high-school. Today, after partying with us last night, Sharon hopped on a plane to attend a wedding in Seattle! The extra mile, indeed!

I also want to thank our ex-patriot, Hal Caswell, for coming all the way from Amsterdam to join us. At first he didn’t believe he’d be able to be here, but he did what it took to come and tell us all about linear algebra and threatened animal population studies.

Please know that I’m so happy that all of you also did what it took to be here. This speech has gone on long enough and rather than naming you all individually, I’ll demonstrate my sincere respect by ending it now.

I’ll close with the immortal words of Matthew McConaughey, "All right, all right, all right!"