Reflections from Afar: A
Tribute to the Class of 1980
by Cheers Echevarria-Leary (412)
My “journey” back to high school began the day after Thanksgiving,
2004. I say that in quotation marks because I made the trip only in a
figurative way. Actually, it has been a while since my first and only
homecoming to the motherland after I left her almost two decades ago to
join my family for life as an expatriate in this vast land comprised of
fifty “blue and red”, slightly discordant and not entirely cohesive nor
united states.
I’m not quite sure exactly what came over me on that chilly November day
after a major national holiday. It must have been all that turkey and
other rich and sumptuous foods, which I ingested with gusto and abandon,
that went to my head. Either that or age. Seems to me that when I hit
my fourth decade last spring, I started becoming more sentimental, more
inclined to revisit the past.
At any rate, the day after Thanksgiving was when I came down with
nostalgia fever. I logged on to my computer and decided to sign up with
our batch website (the brilliant brainchild of Rey Espino, Leo Riingen,
et al.). It was something that friends have been prodding me to do for
sometime but which, in the midst of life’s frantic rhythm and its
mundane routine, kept being buried in my lengthy mental “to-do” list.
Within twenty-four hours, my request for membership was promptly
approved by the moderator. I now had access to the corridors and
private nooks of the old high school, as revealed in the lives of my
batchmates during the last twenty-five years. Thus began my “journey”
back home.
And what an amazing journey it was! As soon as I unlocked the door back
to UST High, I beheld the wonders of those years of discovery and
curiosity which I had almost completely forgotten, caught up as I’ve
been in the myriad activities of harried daily life as a wife, working
stiff, and political volunteer.
In our group website, I saw
names and faces both familiar and unknown, and photos of teachers fondly
remembered or hardly at all. Suddenly, a window long kept shut was
flung open, allowing me to peer into the past. I felt like a child who
went up to the attic and found a long-lost beloved toy.
As I hurriedly scrolled down my computer screen in search of familiar
names, an endless stream of e-mail messages came rushing in. Names of
former seat/cheatmates and partners-in-mischief-and-misadventures when I
was in 113, 211, 311, and 412 popped on my screen and transported me
back to the days when I was an awkward and dorky teenager. I was
absolutely in stitches as I read the riotous e-mails posted by various
batchmates. (Jun Baylon’s I found to be the zaniest). A
quarter-century may have transpired and we all may have inevitably aged
a bit but the words of banter in those e-mails reflect the fact that who
we once were----wacky, silly teenagers---is who we essentially still
are. A lot of us may be parents now, and a rare few even grandparents,
but we have, at our core, remained remarkably the same. Like the best
vintage wine, Batch ’80 only becomes finer and more distinctive with the
passage of time.
Without a doubt, our lives have taken divergent paths in the course of
twenty-five years. Like seeds scattered by the wind, we have taken root
and flourished in every crevice: Europe, North America, Asia, the Middle
East, the South Pacific, Australia, Africa-----Batch 80’s global
invasion.
We became accomplished business leaders in various industries, doctors
and other health professionals, lawyers, accountants, engineers,
architects, educators, clergy, entrepreneurs, and so forth. Truly, our
batch represents the best and the brightest of UST High School. We have
certainly produced one of the finest crops of talent that our school has
ever seen. 1980 was a vintage year indeed!
Wherever we are in life now and whatever we have become and are still in
the process of becoming, it all began in that staid, steel gray high
school building that we, members of Batch ’80, all call HOME.