GHS Class of ’64 slated for 50th reunion this weekend

More than 150 people, including 110 alums and four former teachers, are expected to attend the Germantown High School Class of 1964’s 50th reunion this weekend in Huntington Valley.

Slated to start at 5:30 p.m. Sunday at the Philmont Country Club, the event has no theme like, say, a prom.

Rather, organizers consider it a celebration of life.

Ellen Landow headed the reunion committee all the way from California.

“[We’re] just a bunch of ‘older adults’ trying to recapture the spirit of our youth and those happy days even though our nation was rocked by some historical tragedies during those years,” she said.

Looking back

The Class of 1964 attended classes at GHS during a time that featured many landmark historical events.

They include the Bay of Pigs fiasco, President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the construction of the Berlin Wall, the March on Washington and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, as well as the passage of the Civil Rights Act.

The tenor of the times made being a GHS student all the more significant.

“We were immersed in racial diversity during the time of the civil rights movement,” Landow recalled. “The culture of the school and its faculty exemplified that each person was equal to the next. It was a natural open environment.”

Out of 539 graduates, committee members were able to contact 350.

One Class of ’64 grad is traveling from Kenya to attend.

Landow said she does not expect that the pending sale of GHS to out-of-state developers will dampen the celebratory atmosphere of the event.

The School District of Philadelphia closed GHS in June 2013 after 99 years of educating students in Northwest Philadelphia.