ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, June 8, 1996 TAG: 9606090040
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MATT CHITTUM STAFF WRITER
THE FINCASTLE HIGH SCHOOL class of '41 survived intact for 55 years - until this week.
Fincastle High School's class of 1941 will sit down around a big table at the Sunnybrook Inn tonight, as they do every few years.
Although they've never had all of the class at one reunion, all 24 who got their diplomas on a June day 55 years ago survived all these years until this one.
Friday, they laid their classmate Ruth Winifred "Sis" Dillon into the earth in Godwin Cemetery, just across the road from where the brick schoolhouse stood.
"I thought sure I'd be the one to break the link," said Reva Salmons, who helped organize the reunions along with Dillon. They were together just a few weeks ago, and Dillon seemed fine. But she contracted pneumonia. The sickness took her pretty fast.
Dillon lived right in Fincastle - and did until her death - played basketball and was "very likable," Salmons said.
She married twice, was town clerk for a long time and served on Town Council.
At her funeral, Fincastle United Methodist Church Pastor Michael Lyle pointed out the place where Dillon always sat, and told how whenever there was a crisis in a Fincastle family, Dillon was always at the door right away with a dish and an offer of help.
All of the members of the class who live nearby were at Dillon's funeral, Salmons said.
"We were a close-knit class, just kind of like a family, a large family," she said. But then there was always something special about the group, as if somehow anointed to be always together.
There were signs. They were the last class of Fincastle High. It burned two months after they graduated. The Health Department office stands there now. The building was leveled, but there is a story that surviving in the ashes was a stack of five Bibles.
There were only two boys in the class of '41 - Jack Baker and Galen Drewry. They and the 22 girls came from all over the central and southern parts of the county. Salmons helped her father milk 27 cows twice a day on a 100-acre farm in Daleville. She would catch the bus at the old Ikenberry and Garst's store on U.S. 220.
The class boasted three members of the Baker family, who started school in a rural part of the county, where they could go only until the seventh grade. Brother Jack repeated the seventh grade four times while waiting for his sisters, Dottie and Sis, to finish it, too. Then all three started high school in Fincastle the same year.
"It's a strange thing, but we didn't start until...'' Salmons paused to count the years. "Our 38th year was our first reunion."
Since then, they've gathered every two or three years. About seven members of the class, including Dillon, still lived in the area, and they became the reunion committee. Classmates come from as far away as Florida for the gatherings.
Reminiscing about her school days, Salmons remembered a 25th member of the class of '41. Helen Firebaugh died of polio that last year of school.
"I remember we missed school for 10 days because of that."
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