Beech Tree News Network

When my husband, Garey, was in the fourth grade, Mrs. Agnes Murphy was his teacher.  It was during the era when teachers were able to have morning devotionals and prayer with their students.  During one of those morning prayers, nine-year-old Garey Hughes prayed to God that every one of his class mates would make it into heaven.  He couldn’t bear the thought of being separated from any of them for eternity.  If you were given the opportunity to meet the people who made up that class and went on to graduate together from Corner High School in Corner Alabama, you would believe Garey’s prayer had been answered.  I met them years ago at their first class reunion.  I saw them again Saturday night at their 50th class reunion.  They’re still the same incredibly loving, supportive, stick-together, watch-each-others backs people they were back then.
    The reunion was held in the basement of the class president’s home.  Johnny and his wife, Anita, had the place decked out with lights and banquet tables and a sound system cranking out sixties tunes.  After everyone arrived, we were directed to an area set up like a class room.  The class officers brought the meeting to order.  The roll was called—51 out of the original 64 graduates were there—and each graduate stood to a round of applause from the others.  We all stood for the pledge of allegiance then a report was given on the scholarship money that had been awarded to a 2016 Corner graduate from this 1966 class, and her letter of thanks was read.  All of this was followed by a prayer led by the class vice-president then we were free to dig into the spread of barbeque, brisket, beans, slaw and potato salad and our choice of thirty-six different desserts—I counted them.   It was a Southern gathering at its best.
    When I’m at a gathering like this one, I love to float around the room snatching bits of conversation and lighting long enough to catch the punch line to a joke or listening to how one student got one over on a teacher or feeling the pride of a mom whose daughter is a veterinarian at a zoo in the Carolinas.  I love watching the genuine interest in the eyes of the listeners and the enthusiasm in the voices of the speakers.  There are so many backgrounds at a gathering like this.  One of Garey’s classmates just moved back after spending 32 years as a missionary in South Africa.  One of his classmates flew in from California just to attend the reunion, his wife staying behind to care for their disabled son—she insisted that her husband make the trip.
    There was a table set up with high school yearbooks.  I opened one to the pages of seniors and tried to match the people in the room to the photos in the book.  When I found the section on the teachers, I found the picture of Mr. Paschenko, Garey’s band teacher.  I remembered the name Paschenko being called during the roll call.  I sought him out—his name was Mike—and asked if he was the teacher’s son.  He said yes he was then I asked about the mention of Kiev Conservatory under his father’s picture.  Again he said yes that’s where his father had trained, at Kiev in the Ukraine, formerly part of the Soviet Union.  His father and mother had been able to leave the Soviet Union on visas during a time when it was next to impossible to do so. 
    “Did Garey ever tell you the story of how my parents met?” he asked.
    “No,” I said, “He talked a lot about your father and the fact that he played violin in the Birmingham symphony orchestra, but I don’t remember anything else.”
    “My mother was the conductor of the Kiev symphony orchestra at the time,” he said.  “My father was an excellent violinist and my mother was in need of a first violin for the orchestra.  In the meantime, my father had been arrested—this was the Soviet Union in the forties, you could be arrested for next to nothing—and he was scheduled to be executed.  My mother heard about him and his plight and approached the authorities for his release.  They refused to release my father, so she left and returned with a silver tea service as a bribe.  The authorities took the bribe and released my father, who begged my mother to marry him, and the rest is history.”  Mike has three other siblings, who are scattered throughout the US.  Both parents are deceased, but he is still so proud of their accomplishments in Russia and here in the States.  His mother, Nina Paschenko, was the conductor of the Birmingham Symphony while he was growing up.  His dad played first violin there and taught band until he retired. 
    I didn’t expect a story like that one at a class reunion in Corner, Alabama, but I can’t say that I was surprised.  Garey talked a lot about his high school band teacher throughout our years together, but he never mentioned to me that the man was from Russia.  He said once that Mr. Paschenko was a little bit hard to understand, but that was the only hint I had that the man had a foreign background.  But that’s how Garey’s entire class is.  They really don’t focus on differences.
    Before everyone left, it was decided that this class of 1966 would begin meeting every year instead of every five or ten years.  They genuinely miss each other too much to wait any longer.  And years from now when Garey ‘s prayer is answered, I fully expect to find them all hanging out together in Heaven.