Aloha classmates and friends
Reunion News

Happy New Year 2009, Next year will mark 40 years since graduation. The website wasn't updated much since last year, but we did hear from a few people this year. Jaime Picoc sent a message for 2008.

Plans for our class reunion are being made by the reunion committee. E-mail Norman Noguchi or the reunion committee information (see the reunion page). Updates will be posted on this website. Plans are being made for a joint class reunion in Las Vegas for the classes of: 1967, 1968, and 1969 in September of 2009. Go to the reunion page and make your plans early.

Message from Jaime Picoc 4/8/2008:

Lloyd, time to change the Front Page again ! ... if you use this, check the spelling 'eh ?

2008, the Year of the Rat. Now 5 Am in the morning, 4 hours into "Daylight Savings." Funny the thought, to be able to save time. Now days I am into looking back. Not really living in the past, just looking back with a smile. Mostly through music and memories of the times and places where such things take me back. Back to what? Through music and images I feel a bit young again, for a time anyway. What binds me to today slips away and I am a teen again. Sleeping late, or not. Having another worry about what will become of me. Responsibilities haven't touched me yet, and I can do what strikes my fancy. The beach, going downtown, or just hanging out with friends. Things never change, for the young do just that today. just look to our kids, and grand kids (great grand kids?)

I remember the one of the last times I was home. Riding down to Waipahu to meet with Debbie Haino Kaui (1st time). She was at her halau that evening. Practice for a performance later on at Hans L'Orange Park in a week or so. Watching her and the rest of the girls/ladies practice. Then there was a moment, when her Kumu Hula needed to show one of the younger girls how to do a certain moment. She wasn't the young and nubile woman anymore, but when the music came on and she dipped and started to dance, oh how the years slipped away. I was mesmerized, smiling for in those few moments she was young and graceful once more. One could see the joy she too had in that moment. Her eyes a glitter, the supple twist and turn of hands and fingers, hips, legs and feet so light once more. I came away that day, feeling young once more. As I flashed down Waipahu Street on the motorcycle, past Waipahu Elementary, the Waikele bridge, up by Shintaku hill where I used to live then past Depot Road and out to Pearl City. It was with a great joy, like a kid being out.

In the back of my mind, over the images of that day, were the images of 35+ years before. People and places, of things done and left undone. Of paths in life I might have taken to lead me someplace else. And in me then, for a time, was the spirit of youth and being as free as one. I still live, and in that living the sun still is warm on my skin, and the breeze so sweet to taste. So in this early morning I watch and listen to my PC (YouTube), to the music and movements of the hula, and sweet falsettos of a big blahlah. Then laugh again at Rap Reiplinger "Chanting" and doing "Fate Yanagi." no longer feeling uneasy at being older, after all, the young don't have the wealth of our memories. They gottah find their own!

So next year, "Garin Bahl Bearin'," when you get together, I plan to be there. And I will feel like one "small keed, wiping his hannahs' on the sleeve of his shirt. Oh, we never "changed the world" in a big way, but as we went along in life, touching souls, did we not leave a part of ourselves? Did we not change something small and insignificant? A mind? A feeling? A thought? A heart? That in the years ahead, years when we are no longer here, will we not be remembered. Just a soft touch on another's mind, for the laughter, for the tears ? For that quiet warmth deep within and that small smile on anothers lips. For a passage through life just a soft carress across another's mind. May it be that our passge was not in vain. that we did make changes, each of us, in our own way. And perhaps, when the sum total of all of us is added up, I think we all might be astounded. Might be pleased. And when it is, that we leave this place for the last time, as laughing children. Let us glance over our shoulders and laugh, for it was beautiful, the "Days of My(Our) Youth"

So continue to raise your heads and eyes into the bright sunlight, my friends of days past. We remain the children we always were. with so much yet to see and do. We are not yet done with this place, and we have much to do yet ! So how come, I was born in the Year of the Bunny?

Jim "Jaime" T. Picoc