In July of 2008, when I first heard from my dear friend Ann Broad Bussel about a possible 60th Year Reunion of our 1949 Confirmation class, I thought it sounded like a fun idea and asked to be kept informed.

My life in Lawrenceville, Georgia was busy, as usual. I was involved in a project and had a deadline to meet. But when Ann got back with me right after Thanksgiving, to tell me that things had jelled and it was really going to happen, I became immediately intrigued. This fit perfectly into a main interest of mine... personal histories.

I offered to create a commemorative book to document every confirmant’s life from that point to this, in their own words, and to include “then” pictures, clips from the class photograph (see above) and “now” photos, recent pictures of how we all appear sixty years later. This collection is the result. Based on my "Everyone Has A Story"© life-writing system, I prepared a questionnaire of fifty questions in seven categories, as a way of stimulating the memory of each confirmant. This was sent, via email, on December 23, 2008, to everyone. I told them that by participating in this delightful project we’ll now all go down in history... at the very least in the history of Temple Beth Sholom, as a copy of the book will go into the temple’s archives.

Ann and I wondered how or if each of our lives continued with a strong focus on Judaism. And if so, how they had been affected by our time in the Temple Beth Sholom religious education classes. The classes had provided an excellent education regarding our Jewish heritage.

In her extensive research to locate everyone of the sixteen girls and the lone boy, Ann discovered that two of our number, Alan Levy and Suzanne Stahl Engelman, could not be found. We knew that two others had passed away, Helene Rosenthal Levitt and Gilda Goldstein Gutierrez. The rest are living in various parts of the country.

For me, the task to get everyone to reflect upon and write about their lives was like the proverbial herding of cats. Getting the photos was even harder in some cases, and a couple never made it into the book.

Sadly, two of our number have chosen not to participate, so as in the case of our deceased friends, some of the sketches are biographical, having been written by someone other than the confirmant. The rest have responded with their autobiographies, some brief, others marvelously detailed. And what a treat it has been for me to read them, to see how diverse our lives have been, and in some cases how similar.

Now the book is complete.

And the underlying story tells one important thing... that our Jewish heritage, no matter whether or not we became devout, has affected in great measure the kind of people we have become.

Family devotion has remained central in our lives. We each have faced personal challenges with dignity and grace. At one time or another every one of us has given of our time and our love to make a difference in the lives of others and in the society in which we live.

It is exciting to know that some of our number are traveling from other cities, as far away as California, so that we who gather can look into one another’s eyes on the evening of May 29 and share our reunion after sixty years of full and vibrant life.

Over the years I have completed many writing tasks but this one has been closer to my heart than most others, dealing as it does with the youth we all shared those many years ago.

It has been my honor to have gathered our stories in this collection and to know that each of our families will have this special memento to pass down through the generations to come. The task has brought me closer to those classmates with whom I have maintained a relationship over the years, and has given me the gift of getting to know those others better.

We were special in many ways, by the grace of birth, by our parents’ selection of geography, and by the confluence of time. We were bright... and beautiful, and I hope that by now we have all become wise.