On Sunday, July 21, nine members of the last class to graduate from Andover High School (AHS) enjoyed a champagne cruise on the M/S Mount Washington with spouses, friends, and special guest Max Boyd and his wife. Three members were unable to attend: Don Corliss, Carol Hill Gallagher, and Rufus Stacey.
Sandra Harding toasted the men of the class and thanked them for their service. All of them enlisted in the armed forces after high school or college, but as one of them said “Well, if you didn’t enlist you’d get drafted anyway. After all, there was Vietnam.”
Dave Jewett then led a toast and a moment of silence for our departed classmates, Janet Stafford, Samantha Roberts, and Ralph Frost.
Pictures, yearbooks, programs, and other memorabilia were passed around amid lots of laughter and joking. Biographies written from questionnaires Sandra had sent out were distributed and approved by each member, and a note from Carol Hill Gallagher written to Margie Cook was also passed around.
Mr. Arnold Gross was our class advisor for three years, and our yearbook was dedicated to him. In a telephone interview with Sandra Harding in June, Mr. Gross caught us up on his life after AHS, and the interview was read by Sandra. A Reunion Yearbook will be assembled from everything brought to the cruise, and each class member will receive a copy, with an additional copy donated to the Andover Historical Society.
The buffet brunch was superb, with complimentary mimosas, and the staff treated us like celebrities. From the top deck we had a scenic tour of the lake and mountains and the chance to table hop, catching up here and there with each other.
As one member said “We sure don’t look like we’re old enough to have graduated 50 years ago.” For a few hours, we were kids again.
A Short Biography of Arnold Gross
In a telephone interview with Sandra Harding in June 2013, Mr. Gross shared the following information.
Arnold James Gross was born on January 17, 1937 at home in Beebe River, a part of Campton, New Hampshire. He graduated from Plymouth Teachers College (now Plymouth State University) in 1958, and Andover High School was his first teaching job. He received his master’s degree from Hunter College in New York City and was also awarded a fellowship at Union College.
He married Laura MacNeill, who graduated from AHS in 1951, and they have two sons: Paul, living in Richmond, Virginia, and Peter in Tennessee. Mr. and Mrs. Gross are anxiously awaiting their first great-grandchild.
After leaving Andover, Mr. and Mrs. Gross moved to Ossining, New York, and he taught at Briarcliff, New York middle and high schools for 32 years and was team leader of Social Studies. He retired in 1994 at age 57, through a buy-out of his contract with the school, and Mrs. Gross, also a teacher, retired in 1992, also through a buy-out.
They are active in their Baptist Church and are part of the church’s disaster relief organization. They were at 9/11 the second week after the towers collapsed and also went to Florida after Hurricane Charlie, where their church hosted up to 200 people and then procured a warehouse and an apartment building there for homeless refugees of the storm.
As part of their church visiting team, they visit retirement and assisted living homes as well as hospital patients. Mr. Gross is in a glee club with the YMCA and is planning a 1950s review (poodle skirts!) in August and is also part of a southern gospel quartet.
They sold Mrs. Gross’ mother’s home in Danbury and live in Franklin, Tennessee to be near their sons and their families, but travel to New England every fall to see the foliage and visit with old friends here.
I asked Mr. Gross what advice he would have given us at graduation if he had still been our advisor in our senior year. His reply was, “Remain true to basic values.”