A Letter to the Graduates of Frederick High School (2026)
Rationally, I know that time moves at a constant and predictable pace. It doesn’t slow down. It doesn’t speed up. The speed at which it is moving today will be the speed at which it will move tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. When I am no longer around to observe the consistent movement of time, it will continue to march at the same pace. Rationally, I know this to be true.
Irrationally, it does not seem like it has been almost 25 years since I graduated from Frederick High School. It feels impossible that this much time has elapsed. It seems as if it was only yesterday that I was subject to a time-honored ritual filled with pomp and circumstance. Just yesterday, I received my diploma. Just yesterday, I gathered in an end zone, taking pictures with my dear friends. Just yesterday, I made promises to stay in touch and keep the lines of communication open. Irrationally, I graduated yesterday and still have my whole life before me.
Yet, time is doing what it has always done and will always do. It remains at a constant pace, without regard to my disbelief. This truth leads me to the center of this year’s letter.
Myself and 60+ other souls graduated from Frederick High School in 2002. We stepped out of our caps and gowns and into an interconnected world. We didn’t know it at the time, but email, cellphones, and social media would soon fold the map and close distances between people as new forms of communication revolutionized the world. In those gaps, mysteries that could only be solved by attending a high school reunion were known. As a generation, we no longer had to wonder without end about the direction our fellow classmates took after graduation. With a few simple clicks, we could dig through their public lives. We could see what they did after school. We could find out where they lived, what they did for work, with whom they had fallen in love, how many kids they had, and the lives they built for themselves. We had front row seats for their celebrations and heartbreaks. Technology changed our world, and it ended mysteries that could only be solved at a reunion.
In the wake of this monumental shift, it seems one might only elect to attend their high school reunion because of school pride or to boast about their accomplishments. If that isn’t your angle, it appears genuine connection isn’t enough of a motivator. From where I am sitting, it seems like technology is killing the high school reunion.
If you’ll permit me, I would like to argue for a return to this tradition.
Exiting the pandemic, I found myself longing for third spaces. If our home is our primary place, and work functions as a second place, then third places are spaces where we are in community with others. We gather in these spaces around shared beliefs, hobbies, passions, and/or causes. These spaces can happen virtually, but since the pandemic, it seems more people are hungry to be in community with other humans in the real world. If I walked away from 2020 with a single overarching lesson, I learned that there is no replacement for the power of these spaces.
In my own life, this has meant volunteering with organizations like Rotary, Gay for Good Seattle, and the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness. It has meant joining film clubs, book clubs, and writing groups. It has also meant creating my own communities via a cinema supper club and my own book club. I long to be in communion with others. I need it like I need air to breathe.
I also need our high school reunion. These traditions are an opportunity to be in community. Our shared experience is the driving force that pulls us back together, but it isn’t the only thing.
I chose to attend the 20-year reunion for the class of 2002 for many reasons. First, I missed our 10-year reunion due to work. A sense of guilt was drawing me home. I was also drawn back to Oklahoma, because at one point in my life, those with whom I graduated were my entire world. Frederick, being a community of less than 5,000 people, I knew the first and last names of every person in my class. I could probably tell you where they lived and what their parents did for a living.
Living in such a small town, we shared many of the same aspirations and fears for the future. Stepping into a rapidly changing world, we developed a kinship that defined us as a class.
These human beings were also dear friends. They have seen me at my best, and they have seen me at my worst. They were cheerleaders, and they provided counsel. They were my people. They helped shape, mold, and process a world in which we saw the federal building in Oklahoma torn asunder by domestic terrorists, and watched collectively in horror as foreign terrorists ripped a hole in the New York skyline and through the heart of American military might. We lived through trauma and triumph together. We built a world together, and we pushed the boundaries of that world beyond the 9 square miles that hold Frederick, Oklahoma together.
From every corner of the map, their caring and giving nature continued when educational goals were achieved, professional milestones crossed, and relationships blossomed. When my brother died, some of the first people to reach out to me were friends from high school. The same is true when my father passed away.
When I pull all these reasons together, I cannot help but feel it is necessary to attend every class reunion that time and distance will allow. I owe so much of who I am to my fellow classmates. I would like to think this hasn’t been a one-sided relationship. In my own small way, I would like to think I have also made an impact on their lives.
So, yes, I still think high school reunions are necessary. In a world with rapidly changing tools of human connection, I think it is more necessary than ever. I will attend, not because I have no idea where life has taken you. I will attend, not because Frederick High School pulls some deep sense of pride from the depths of my soul. I will attend, not because my life has morphed into some grand adventure I feel necessary to share with the world. I will attend because I love my classmates. For the entirety of my life, they have invested in me, and I have invested in them. That investment has felt like love, and love is what draws me from Seattle back home.
See you at the 30th reunion.
Be good to each other,
Nathan
As a member of the factory, you are taking a stand for human powered creation.
