A class representative keeps the addresses of his or her classmates, sends the reunion letters, passes along the news of births, weddings, illnesses and deaths, and calls the roll of the class at the banquet. It is a labor of love, and some of these good people have done it for twenty years. If you want to reach a classmate, write to your class representative through me, and I will pass your letter along. I do not put home addresses on the computer.

The first class to finish at Longleaf, in 1927, had five members, and the last of them went home to glory in 1993. The oldest living Panther we know of is Mr. John McKee, Class of 1928, who is 89 and lives with his daughter in Washington. He sends his greetings to all and says he is still waiting for somebody from the Class of 1927 to tell him he's wrong about something.

These classes have no representative, and in most cases we have lost track of the members altogether. They are out there. Some of them are surely reading this, or their children are.

• Class of 1930. A small class, about a dozen, we believe. Two members were living in New Jersey in the 1970s.
• Classes of 1936 and 1937. These were the hardest years of the Depression, and many families left the county altogether, some for the North and some for Florida. If your mother or father finished at Longleaf in those years, we would dearly like to hear from you.
• Classes of 1943 and 1944. The war years. Many of the young men left for the service before graduation and finished their schooling later, somewhere else, or never. Many of the young women went north to work. Professor Pressley kept a list of the boys in uniform on the wall of the auditorium. We would like to know what became of them.
• Class of 1951. Our representative for many years passed in 1996, and the class list went with her. I graduated the year after this class and knew most of them by sight. Class of 1951, I am calling you. Please write.

If you can help any of these classes, or if you'd like to serve as a class representative, please write to me at [email protected]. Give your name, your class, and the name you went by in school, because half of us were called something else entirely, and I knew you by that name.