Being a high school senior in 1945 was an experience like no other.
The graduating class of Shields High School in Seymour witnessed the close of an era — Germany’s surrender in World War II on May 7, 1945.
The end of that era marked the end of a chapter in the seniors’ lives.
There were 13 class members who were already serving in the armed forces at the time of graduation and many received their diplomas in absentia.
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It is believed that only eight or nine out of the 116-member class of 1945 still survive.
One member of the class who has been instrumental in helping plan the reunions over the years is Lloyd Howard.
Howard said the actual number in their class is debatable since some members didn’t graduate because of military service or moved before graduation.
"We’ve held class reunions almost every five years since the 35th one in 1980," Howard said. "The members who normally planned the event lived in Columbus, and our 75th reunion would’ve been this year."
This year’s reunion was canceled because only three of the remaining members can travel. About 46 class members have passed away since 2010, so that means their 70th reunion was the final one, Howard said.
"I live in a 1,500-square-foot casita, meaning ‘small house’ in Spanish, in Scottsdale, Arizona that my daughter and her husband built for my wife and I," Howard said. "Unfortunately, my wife, Harriett, died on Dec. 28, 2018, after 68 years of marriage. She was the cousin of a well-known Seymour minister, Harold Barnett."
Howard and his wife had originally retired to Bonham, Texas, but they had two daughters in the Phoenix area, so they moved to Arizona.
"My family and I have been doing fine during the pandemic. I just returned from a two-week stay at the farm of one of my son’s in Missouri," Howard said. "I’m also going to the northwest to visit some of the national parks, and I’ll end up at my grandson’s home in Bend, Oregon."
Howard and his other son had a Danube River cruise scheduled for this year, but the pandemic has now delayed it until next June.
He said he hasn’t lived through anything like this before, and the most recent similar situation would be the black plague in Europe, where maybe one-third of the people in some countries died.
Howard is a World War II veteran and served in the U.S. Navy at the close of World War II. He then served three years in the Air Force Reserve at Camp Atterbury and is a retired minister for the Christian Church, Disciples of Christ. He is currently working on his 120-page autobiography.
The other surviving classmates are scattered across the country, from New Hampshire to California and points in between.
Just one, Mary Thoele Schneider, 92, still lives in Seymour. After 66 years of marriage, her husband, Donald Schneider, passed away in 2017.
"Donald and I met at Walther League youth group, which was a church group," Schneider said. "Both of us went to Immanuel Lutheran Church."
The couple have three children, Julie Branham, Jerry Schneider and Victor Schneider. Jerry passed away in 2013.
"Mom had just turned 17 years old when she graduated because she did both third and fourth grade in one year at Chestnut Ridge School," Branham said. "Then she ended up graduating eighth grade at Immanuel after Chestnut Ridge closed."
Schneider said she applied to Franklin University and received a scholarship, but didn’t go. The summer after she graduated high school, she was sick with undulant fever and stayed home.
Undulant fever, also known as brucellosis, is a bacterial infection that spreads from animals to people. Most commonly, people are infected by eating raw or unpasteurized dairy products, according to mayoclinic.org.
Schneider grew up on a farm and remembers getting up early and milking the cows before school and then again that evening.
"Mom was always a housewife after marriage and helped out on the farm," Branham said. "For several years when we had a lot of chickens, she had an egg route in town and also made angel food cakes and noodles for sale."
Branham said her mother has been doing well during the pandemic and has been reading a lot. Her two sisters, Helen Goecker and Irma Franke, live nearby in Seymour, but she hasn’t seen them since March.
Kenneth Ritz lives in Columbus and just turned 94. He was one of the class members who left to serve in the military during high school.
"I joined the Navy when I was 17 years old between my junior and senior year of high school," Ritz said. "I would’ve been drafted my senior year, but I had two brothers in the service, and so figured I’d go ahead."
Before he left high school to serve the country, Ritz was a member of the high school track team.
Ritz served in the military for three years, and at the time, he was thinking more about what the Navy was like rather than thinking of high school graduation, he said.
In March 1944, he was among 13 boys at Shields High School who took a qualifying exam for Army-Navy college training programs, which would enable those who were accepted to get a certain amount of college training before being called to active service.
"When I was in the Navy, I took a course where they said all I’d have to do was take the paperwork from that class back to my high school, and that would allow me to graduate," Ritz said. "I took the paperwork to the dean of boys at Shields High School, and he didn’t know anything about it, but I guess I should’ve gone back again."
After he was out of the Navy and went to apply for employment and other opportunities, he was told he was qualified enough by having served in the military, and the GI Bill accepted that, too.
As for the pandemic, Ritz said he has been staying indoors as much as possible after he had a light stroke and was in the hospital for most of May, but he said he has come through that and is going pretty well.
Jean Wilson Motsinger resides in Indianapolis and will be celebrating her 93rd birthday Saturday.
"We’re just getting older than dirt," she said. "I’m a widow and still a licensed real estate broker, and I’ve been in real estate for 51 years."
Motsinger said back in her high school days, she believes people were nicer to one another.
"During the war was an interesting time to be living in, and at night, we couldn’t have our drapes or blinds open because of planes flying over," she said. "Everything was blacked out, just like a big city."
She said the pilot training school and airfield southwest of Seymour in Jackson County was built in 1942 or 1943, and the Seymour airfield was activated.
Motsinger said she has been to most of her class reunions over the years and feels very fortunate she has been fine during the pandemic.
"For a long time when I started going to the reunions, I was the only one who knew everybody, and we had a great class," she said. "A lot of people who were in the class behind us and before us wanted to come to our reunions because we always had a good time."
Sally Sargeant Reeves said she is doing very well and is happy to be able to say that at her age, as she will soon be 93.
"I have only been to a few of our high school reunions because I live up here in New Hampshire and I lived in Vermont a good many years before I moved here," she said. "But I’ve been to several of the reunions because I have a sister that lives in Brownstown now but lived in Seymour for most of her life."
Reeves said they were in high school for four years of World War II.
"It started the December we were freshmen and ended as we were graduating, so all of the boys in our class when they got to age 18, they were snatched out of school and drafted," she said. "I remember our senior prom, there were seven of us girls went together because our boyfriends that would’ve been our dates had already left to go into the service."
At the time Reeves got married, her husband, Courtney Reeves, had a job in New York City, so they lived in New York for five years. Then his company transferred him to Cleveland, Ohio, and they were there for five years and then moved back east.
"We raised our family in Connecticut and retired up here because we’re all skiers, so we retired to Vermont," she said. "My husband had his own paper company, so when I retired from teaching in Connecticut, we were able to move up to our house in Vermont."
"He was from Evanston, Illinois, and I met him in college and we were married 49 years. He has been gone now for 20 years," she said. "After Courtney died, I went to a class reunion, reconnected with my high school sweetheart, Don Davis, and we were married in 2001, but he died of cancer in 2003. So during that time, I came back and lived in Seymour part time."
She lost one son and said that was terribly hard.
"He was a Black Hawk helicopter pilot and served two tours in Iraq, and so he died because of the stuff he breathed in and it gave him a form of cancer," Reeves said. "So that was terrible and it remains terrible, but I still have my three other children and they’re nearby and we’re all close together, and I have beautiful grandchildren."
Reeves said she has lived in the middle of a beautiful New England village for six years and watches life go past her door all of the time. She can walk to the post office, the little grocery store and even the library from where she lives, so she feels very blessed.
Mabel (Widdop) Williamson, 93, resides in Redding, California and has lived in the Golden State for over 20 years.
"My husband and I moved out here a long time ago and he’s passed away now," she said. "I’m hanging in there, let me put it that way."
Williamson said she has been a housewife for most of her life.
"My husband and I went to one class reunion, but I can’t remember how long ago that’s been," she said. "I do remember I played trombone in the high school band and Mr. Rigsby was the band director. It was fun being in the band."
Williamson said she doesn’t drive anymore, but a lady comes over a couple times a week and helps take care of her and takes her shopping on Wednesdays.
Another classmate is Mary Lou (Yeager) Houston, who is 92 years old and lives in Germantown, Tennessee.
"Most of the people I knew growing up have either moved away from Seymour or have have passed on," Houston said. "I have been a widow for so long, sometimes it’s hard to remember how many years ago my husband passed away."
She went on to say that she hasn’t lived in Seymour since she got married, many years ago.
"Actually, my husband worked for the government he was in the aircraft engine department and working out of Louisville, which is where we met and all that kind of stuff."
Houston has been a housewife ever since she got married.
"My husband said he would make the money and I could write the checks," Houston said. "So we lived with that purpose for a long, long time."