THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, October 28, 1994 TAG: 9410260124
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Ida Kay's Portsmouth
SOURCE: Ida Kay Jordan
LENGTH: Medium: 83 lines
It was a good year, perhaps the best of times in Portsmouth.
After the war (World War I, that is) and before the Great Depression, life was comfortable and secure in Portsmouth.
That was the year described by Rosa Goldstein Karp Jacobs, a member of the Woodrow Wilson class of 1924.
Ten members of the class - eight women and two men - gathered for a 70th reunion last Friday. The reunion was a first, upstaging the 65th reunion of the Wilson class of '29 on the same day.
Most of the classmates are 87 and 88 years old.
Dorothy Broughton Brennan is an exception. She's only 86.
``I was the baby of the class, I guess, because I just turned 86 last week,'' Brennan said. ``I was just 15 when we graduated.''
Brennan and Dr. Julius Caplan, a physician who retired 15 years ago, also were classmates at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg.
Many of the 124 members of the class went away to school and most of the women went to teachers colleges, urged by their families to get a teaching certificate in case they needed to work.
Harrisonburg State Teachers College (now James Madison University) and Farmville State Teachers College (now Longwood College) were favorites.
``My father thought I should get a certificate but I never taught,'' Jacobs said. Instead, after going to Harrisonburg, she worked at Karp's Pharmacy operated by her brother-in-law. Jacobs now lives in Virginia Beach, a place once visited only in the summer by Portsmouth people.
The class of '24 had one other reunion, the 50th. Jacobs missed that one because she was in Hong Kong.
Doris Hanvey Lindauer missed the 70th because she was on a Caribbean cruise.
``We had a big one for the 50th,'' Esther Love Roane recalled.
The class, she said, had many illustrious members including the late Lawrence I'Anson who became Chief Justice of Virginia. In 1974, most class members were still living and many were able to travel long distances to attend the reunion.
Twenty years took a toll.
The 70th came about when Roane and Ella Louise Moore Buxton got to talking at church about their classmates.
``We couldn't find many with good heads and good legs,'' Roane said. ``Think how fortunate we are to be here!''
Buxton explained that everybody had to order from The Max menu ``because we didn't know what people could eat.''
Buxton and Lelia Thomas Triplett are among the classmates who lived elsewhere for many years and later returned home. Others stayed here.
Lois Westbrook Johnson taught Latin at Wilson for 40 years - ``off and on.''
``But even when I once worked in an office, I tutored Latin,'' she said.
Would she have expected to attend a 70th reunion of her Wilson class?
``I hoped to,'' she said. ``Now I'm looking to 90 years.''
Harriett Brown, another teacher, stayed put too.
``Let's be thankful we're here and can be together and see each other,'' she told her classmates.
Art Quarnstrom, who operated an appliance store on Granby Street in Norfolk for many years, was accompanied by his granddaughter, Dottie Boesch, who attended her 10th reunion at Granby this year.
``I don't know what got in their heads to have this,'' Quarnstrom said. ``But I'm having a good time.''
So did Jimmy McGehee, 90, husband of one of the classmates, Virginia Blankenship.
He worked his way around the room kissing all the women - his wife's classmates and the others too.
``I want my anniversary kiss,'' he announced to each woman in turn.
Nobody denied him.
After all, a 70th reunion doesn't come along every year.
``It's really a champagne occasion,'' Buxton said. ``But a few of us still drive and I didn't want to have people drinking and driving, so I didn't order it.'' MEMO: Do you have a compliment, criticism, suggestion or story idea? The
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