MSMS 20 year celebration

Warning. This post is probably going to be long. If it gets too long, I may split it into a few posts.

Thursday
I arrived in Columbus right after 10am. When I would make that drive in 1998-1990, it would take right at 3 hours - on Thursday it took me 2 hrs 15 min. I met Jennie at her hotel, then we went to Peppers Deli for lunch. After lunch, we headed to the MSMS campus because she had to be at the Mary Wilson House by 1pm. The Mary Wilson House used to be the Director's home, but now they use it for administration offices.

I assumed that I'd just let Jennie go do her "important speaker" duties while I headed off to sit in the auditorium, but Mr. Brown (the new Executive Director, who used to be in the admin right after we graduated) invited me in with Jennie. We sat in his office and chatted for a little while, then headed over to the Nissan Auditorium which is in Parkinson Hall. During the Opening Convocation, I sat with the faculty and alumni (which consisted of myself and Aubrey) right behind Mr. Carter, who was filming it. Jennie's speech was absolutely fantastic. I cannot wait until she posts the text of it on her blog, because it really was wonderful. She represented our class so well.

At the end of the ceremony, Mr. Brown called Aubrey and me up onto the stage for a "special presentation." He had 20 year service pins for the remaining original faculty members, and he wanted us to present their pins to them. Mr. and Mrs. Carter, Mrs. Richardson, Dr. MacNeill, Dr. Davidson (I hope I didn't miss someone). Of course, Mr. Carter was wearing his collection of service pins on his lapel. :)

Afterwards, we stayed around campus for a while, walked around Hooper, went over to see Aubrey's classroom in Shackleford, etc. We were going to go out for dinner, but ended up just watching some TV and going to bed. We are old, you know.

Friday
For some reason, I had it in my mind that the Emissary tours were on Friday, so we got to campus at about 10:30am expecting our tour. However, the day's events didn't start until the dedication of the MSMS Performing Arts Center at 3pm. Since we had some "free time" we decided we would drive over to Friendship Cemetery and visit our dearly departed faculty members. We found Ms. Morris right away, but it took a few minutes before Jennie finally spotted Mr. Butler. After we checked on them, I wanted to find Blake's great Aunt Mary Ellen, who used to take Blake and Cass to church with her. (stop laughing! I'm sure Cass was perfectly polite about it:) After that, we went back to campus.

We had a little more time to kill before 3pm, so we bought some soft drinks and sat out in the courtyard behind Hogarth for a little bit. Pretty soon it was time, so we went over to the MSMS Performing Arts Center. This is the old MUW Laundry facility, and it's located right behind Shackleford, which is where MSMS has its History and Computer classes now. It didn't look like much from the outside, but on the inside they have a really nice space for band and choir and whatever else they have now. We nearly missed the dedication, because all they did was sing the Alma Mater. LOL! After the crowd thinned out, we saw that Mr. Franklin had been in attendance for the dedication. We were quickly spotted, so there was no making a run for it. Lynn House was also with him, and it was good to see her. She wouldn't get in a photo with us, so Jennie and I were stuck taking a photo with just Johnny. Ms. House indicated that they needed to "head south" so we were relieved that he wouldn't be around for the rest of the weekend's activities.

OK, this is getting long, so I'm going to continue in the next post...... after I take Cameron to the pediatrician.