The annual Philomath High School All-Class Reunion will be coming Saturday, July 29 to Philomath City Park, organizers announced.
The event, which has been a local tradition for many years, is scheduled to run from 11 a.m.-4 p.m. at the park’s Randy Kugler Community Hall. The gathering is a potluck event with lunch to be available at noon. Those attending are encouraged to bring at least one dish to share.
Table service and beverages (water, coffee, iced tea) will be provided and with limited seating, organizers are suggesting that folks bring their own lawn chairs to be able to spread out with classmates.
“The last couple of years, we’ve seen a lot of new faces,” said Todd Tunison (Class of 1974), who helps put the event together. “Some of the younger crowd, too, and actually my son was even there along with some of his buddies.”
Last year’s reunion overall had a lower-than-usual number of participants with around 90 people but Tunison believes the summer heat and another reunion going on across the park probably impacted attendance.
The event, which prior to last year had been called the Philomath Old-Timers Reunion, is not limited only to graduates. Tunison said anyone with a connection to the school is welcome to attend — former students, teachers, employees and so on.
Tunison has had a long association with the reunion.
“My mother was Class of ’48 … my wife and I used to go to all of the old-timers’ reunions,” Tunison said. “We were the youngsters in the late ’80s” and had been brought in “to do all of the heavy lifting.”
Nowadays, Tunison has taken on a more prominent role.
“Peggy Clark had been ram-roddin’ it for a long time and I got involved with it,” he said. “Probably a couple of years ago, they said, ‘well, you get to take all this stuff home with you and store it until the next one’ so that kinda automatically put me in the point. But it pretty much takes care of itself — everybody knows what to do and we repeat it year after year.”
Philomath City Park is located at 299 S. 23rd St.
Anyone with questions can contact Tunison at 541-609-8931 or tktunison@gmail.com.