From Hallways to Life and now back to a reunion
It’s a strange thing, the math of a lifetime. Forty-seven years. It sounds like a historical period, not the time that’s passed since I last walked the halls of Opelika High School as a student. The Class of ’78. We were all bell bottoms, big dreams, and the unshakeable belief that the world was waiting for us just beyond the city limits.
I was recently driving past the old campus, and a flood of memories hit me all at once. I remembered the scent of chalk dust in Mr. Henderson’s math class, the roar of the crowd at Bulldog Stadium on a crisp Friday night, and the anxiety of finding a date for the prom. At the time, those moments felt like the most important events in the universe. Who you sat with at lunch could define your entire week. A passing grade on a history final felt like a ticket to the future.
From the vantage point of 47 years, I see it differently. The real lessons weren’t on the syllabus. They were in the friendships forged while working on a homecoming float, in the resilience learned after a tough loss on the field, and in the kindness of a teacher who saw potential you hadn’t discovered in yourself.
The people I shared those hallways with have scattered like dandelion seeds in the wind. Some stayed and became pillars of the Opelika community. Others, like me, moved away, building lives in places we’d only seen on maps. We are doctors, mechanics, teachers, grandparents. We’ve known joy and heartbreak, success and failure. We carry the memory of those we’ve lost along the way. Yet, when we reconnect, the years seem to melt away. For a moment, we’re not defined by our careers or our mortgages, but by that shared, foundational experience. We’re just kids from Opelika again.
High school doesn’t define who you are, but it gives you the clay. Forty-seven years has been a long time to shape it, and I’m grateful for the foundation that started right here at OHS.
