On Reunions and Grandkids

Last weekend, I missed my 50-year high school class reunion. Shawna and I have 14 grandkids.

Never in high school did I ever reflect forward on becoming a grandparent. Conversely, as a grandparent, I seldom reflect backwards on my high school experiences. But this week the two juxtaposed into a confluence that defines the 2025 me.

I will always be a proud member of the Crystal City High School Class of 1975. Once a Hornet, always a Hornet. But let’s be honest, high school can really suck. Regretfully, 50 years ago, I kept my circle tight. The cliques, the ridiculous ways we divided ourselves up to sooth our insecurities, well, that’s so 1975. But, in 2025, we are deeper, with richer understanding of who we are, of our humanity and the bumpy road we have all followed. We as now senior citizens have all turned out pretty much the same.

But a long time ago, we all searched for our identities in the same small town that has always taken pride in its roots. We cruised the same Main Street, partied together at any house parentally deserted for the weekend. And even though we all went our separate adult ways, we all shared a CCHS that nourished our angst-ridden teenage souls. Fifty years ago, I was too busy trying to get out to appreciate that my hometown was a great place to grow up.

I enjoyed the reunion pictures recently posted on Facebook - filled with camaraderie and affection, like a cozy 1970s crocheted vest. It is a good chapter of life when the gauze of age has softened those long-ago sharp edges. We, the Class of ‘75 share a pivotal life stage.

It was disappointing to miss the reunion, but not a hard choice. Shawna and I have sat through too many Kindergarten Christmas programs and four-year-old dance recitals to count.

My maternal grandparents, Richard and Francis Dunker, raised ten children who all grew into successful adults, in a three-bedroom, one-bathroom house on Crystal Heights Road. Grandma was raised in the bootheel Arkansas boarder Missouri town of Willamette. She answered a classified ad in a local paper for a domestic in the home of a supervisor at the local Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company factory. A few years before, Grandpa had matriculated to Crystal City from Perryville, MO to work at PPG. He climbed his way up to become a crane operator, where in 1970, after 45 years of employment, he retired.

On the Dunker side, I had 26 first cousins. Four of us were in the same catholic school classroom first through fourth grade. Then, Rick's mother and her siter, my mother, decided it was time to break up the comedy team, he banished to the public school.

Saturday nights at Grandma and Grandpa’s were special. At 6 pm, we all gathered in front of the black and white TV for the Newlywed Game. My grandmother was no more than five feet tall, but when the host Bob Eubanks would ask a “whoopie” question, Grandma’s both feet would raise a foot straight up from her recliner, driven by a resounding belly laugh of hilarity. By age 12, I had figured it out.

Next was Roller Derby, then Wrestling at the Chase and finally, the network headliner, Gunsmoke. I was always sound asleep on the living room floor before Marshall Dillon had deposited the last bad guy in the tumble weed blown dirt of Boot Hill. There were five of us. No one got carried to the car.

Grandpa Dunker dropped out of school in the 8th grade. He was getting old enough, he said, the only path he saw to graduation was to marry the teacher, so he quit. Despite a limited formal education, Grandpa was a Grand Master of Life. Once, after Grandma had passed and I was home from college, I took Grandpa to lunch. As we were seated, he told me, “If the waitress has fat ankles, always order the chili.” It has proved over the years, fail proof sage advice I have passed on to my own kids.

Grandpa’s most treasured possession was his 1944 Harley Davidson motorcycle. Even at a young age, I just sensed my grandpa was cooler than yours.

I learned from Grandma and Grandpa Dunker to do the small things, and it'll lead to bigger things. They consistently modeled for 26 grandkids that belief.

My paternal grandfather, Robert Almany, died in 1934, when my dad was three

years old. My paternal grandmother, Mary, had demons. By 1935 she had abandoned my dad in a rooming house in the St. Louis suburb of University City. He told us that his older sister Olive and brother Robert were fiercely protective of him, but just mere teenagers themselves. In the heights of the Great Depression, few were lining up to adopt the four-year-old boy of an alcoholic widow. When the police found him alone for several days and scared, he was on a fast track to the City Orphanage

Somehow, he ended up in Union, MO with the Sherrif of Franklin County. Several years ago I stumbled across a big clue in a 1935 newspaper story on why and how, and I wrote a blog on it. It is head scratching and knee bucklering how a random act of kindness by a stranger changed my dad’s life and thus mine as well. The Sherriff found dad’s Aunt Annie Murphy on a farm south of Crystal City. She agreed to take him in. My four brothers and I grew up on that farm.

Dad hammered into us his story. He had a choice when his father died and his mother left him, he was going to let that motivate him and be the best or he was going to succumb to it and become a statistic of a kid whose parent did something she shouldn’t.

My fellow ’75 classmate Laura Morrow wrote a nice obituary on my dad. https://www.myleaderpaper.com/.../article_a88780f8-1c40...

My dad never acknowledged it, but I know he never forgave his mother for abandoning him as a child. Who could? This ressentiment of betrayal on the most basic human level was a complex and compounding burden that effected his life to the day he died.

Grandma and Grandpa Dunker’s “House on the Heights” is to this day a beacon of a reminder of some of my best childhood memories; comforting and welcoming. Their story isn’t just about a huge brood of grandkids. It’s about a couple who managed to raise a large thriving family through the depths of first the Great Depression, then the Second World War. They laid the foundation for a legacy that today I cherish and pass on. Their lives will influence generations to come.

Conversely, besides a copy of a wedding day photo, I have only one black and white polaroid of my grandmother on the Almany side. In 1963, I am standing with her, expressionless. Like her life, it is stark and blank. Until she passed away in 1976, she would periodically come to live with us. I assumed it was an “all-other options were exhausted” necessity. It never lasted long and it was never good. Dad said as far as he knew, his mother never slept one night of her life in a house she owned.

But life doesn’t always move in straight lines. We are a melting pot and all things are connected. Ninety-one years ago, a grandfather of whom I know nothing, died. Last week I missed my 50-year high school reunion. In a uniquely American way, it all fits nicely.