Wow! When those “Carmel Kids” got together - which we did at the All Mount Carmel Reunion in Auburn on the July 18 weekend - the bonding was instantly born again.

When was the last time so many of us now middle-agers stayed out partying until the midnight hours anyway?

For this huge Mount Carmel Homecoming, almost 1,500 alumni from the classes of 1958 through 1973 showed up at the Emerson Park Pavilion. “Carmel Kids” (oops-none of us are any longer “kids,” are we?) and faculty came back to hometown Auburn from the West to East Coasts and so many locales in between ... even though gasoline no longer costs 43 cents a gallon.

It's no wonder that Janet Geherin Weston (Class of '64), Jo LoPiccolo (Class of '63) and Ann Daly Padlick (Class of '69) and many other Carmel graduates including Sam Giangreco spent two-plus years planning this HUGE reunion homecoming and oh-so-splendid con-celebrated Mass in the pavilion. DJ Sam knows the ol' Carmel building which is now Seward Elementary School.

He graduated with the Class of 1969 - the year before Mount Carmel was forced to close its high school doors because of dropping enrollment numbers financially threatening Carmel's ability to keep our school open with too many freshmen enticed with the huge new Auburn High School opening in 1970.

Oops - the dear nuns and Carmelite fathers once taught us not to write such long run-on sentences.

Oh well, school's out for the summer.

And we Carmel kids really do remember the English lessons and moral guidance with which the faculty of Mount Carmel blessed the Classes of 1958-1973.

Some of us even remember the French, aussi. Et ce n'est pas c'est tout nous se rappeler!

Sue Hemingway

Auburn

Hemingway is a member of Mount Carmel's graduating Class of 1970