Newtown High 50 Year Class Reunion Update

This year members of the Class of 1950 Newtown High School will be holding a reunion celebrating the 50th anniversary of their graduation. Class officers have invited members of the graduating class of 1949 and 1951 to join them in this Y2K Celebration.

Members of these classes attended grades one through 12 in Hawley School or grades one through six in the four-room school in Sandy Hook or grades one through six in the one-room Land’s End schoolhouse in Hawleyville and then the balance in Hawley School. Many of them also attended the one-room Flatswamp schoolhouse in Dodgingtown for one year during WWII when Hawley School became overcrowded. The High School Class of 1951 was the last one to graduate from Hawley School.

A banquet will be held on Saturday night, October 7, followed by a buffet brunch on Sunday. Both functions will be held at The Stony Hill Inn, on Route 6 in Bethel.

Under the leadership of Ken Pelletier (1951), 12 members of the three classes have been meeting and working for the past 18 months planning the event, collecting addresses of the 94 graduates, and sending out an informational letter.

From personal address books, telephone books, and the Internet, members of the planning committee have been able to locate all but six graduates from these three classes. Their names are as follows: Harry Weiss (1949), William Wagner (1950), Ludlow Ogden Clements (1951), James Mainwaring (1951), Martha Jones McLain (1951), and Ronald Wagner (1951). The committee would like to contact them and is asking anyone who reads this article and knows where they live to contact Mrs Mary Mead Buxton, 1A Joan Drive, Newtown, CT 06470, or call her at 203/426-2763.

If there are others who may have at one time been in one of these classes or attended Hawley School at the same time and would like to attend one or both of these functions, they should contact Mrs Buxton as well.

Other members of the committee and the year in which they graduated are as follows: Mary Starr Smith Adams (1950), Paul Allen (1949), Dolores Suarez Allen (1950), Ralph Berkemann (1951), Jack Bresson (1949), Mary Mead Buxton (1951), Joan Glover Crick (1950), Maud Billings Knapp (1950), John Lorenzo (1949), John Pendergast (1950), and Tom Watkins (1950).

Darlene Martin, a grandmother from Washington, won the 100 billionth Crayola crayon made by Binney & Smith. Mrs Martin won the crayon, which was made in the one-only color of blue ribbon, through a contest. She then sold it back to Binney & Smith for a $100,000 bond. The crayon is now in the Crayola Hall of Fame in Easton, PA