Every year for the past several years members of the Emmaus High School Class of 1945 gathered at Perkins to celebrate their high school graduation and to catch up.

Classmates saved the first Friday in June to acknowledge their original graduation day, Linda Oehme, daughter of Emmaus Class of 1945 member Betty Jane Peters Yeahl, said in telephone interview Nov. 9. For the last five years Oehme joined the effort to bring the former classmates together.

“It was downright amazing to watch,” Oehme said of seeing her mother’s classmates and her mother gather for lunch.

“They picked up where they left off,” Oehme said. “It was amazing,” she added.

This year calendars were marked for June 5.

Unfortunately, June of 2020 did not see the friends reunite for a milestone celebration - the 75th class reunion.

Travel restrictions brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic and accompanying concerns for the health of many of the graduates, many of whom are in their 90s, prompted Oehme to reach out to the alums in early spring to test the waters for a possible postponement of the lunch date to September or October with the hope conditions for meeting would improve by fall.

Oehme sent classmates a photo of the 2019 gathering and short survey to ask what they wanted to do.

Hopes were to meet and Oehme, working with her mother and another mother-daughter team, formed plans for the reunion and for Emmaus High School graduation. Oehme planned to have current EHS students sing the alma mater to the Class of 1945 at the luncheon and have members who could attend graduation ceremonies for the Class of 2020.

“We really wanted to do something special,” Oehme said of the diamond jubilee anniversary of the graduation.

Life after graduation in June 1945 started with the challenge of war.

When the Class of 1945 graduated EHS, the official end of World War II was four months away, although the war in Europe had ended in May.

A double page spread in the “The Tattler,” the school yearbook, for 1945 features senior and service portraits of classmates who left school to serve published under the headline “These Answered the Call.”

A dedication in the opening pages of the yearbook reads as follows:

“With mingled pride and regret we have watched our classmates march away with Uncle Sam for two years.”

The end sheets of the yearbook feature hand drawn illustrations of soldiers and sailors in uniform.

In recent years, reunions of the class would include short speeches by the president of the class and a small token or favor for each member to take home. A classmate who was a former military chaplain would lead a prayer before the meal. Some, including Yeahl, brought spouses who joined the festivities. Jokes and memories were shared.

“There is nothing like that anymore,” Oehme said of the bond the classmates share.

Several members of the class died since the last reunion in 2019. Others are hesitant to travel, pandemic conditions nothwithstanding. Efforts are made to stay in touch, however. Yeahl, for example, speaks by phone with close classmates monthly, Oehme said.

In 2019, the reunion theme was 74 years and counting, Oehme said.

To her knowledge, 2020 is the first year the class has not gathered for a reunion, Oehme said.

“It’s crazy,” Oehme said of the changes and challenges members of the EHS Class of 1945 have witnessed.

A letter Oehme received from a class member can be pointed to attempt to explain the resilience of the bond the classmates share.

“We cherish our memories of the past and are taking one day at a time.”