Kendra Setlow:  

Hello and fond greetings to my fellow 1966 BHS Classmates! Have ten years really passed since the last reunion in 2006? I was blessed to see so many of you who attended that summer...to catch up on your life's journeys. Thank you all for your gracious greetings and for making both my husband, Rob, and me, feel so welcome after 40 years! Now it is 50 years, but it hardly seems like half a century since the Class of '66 strode out of BHS to take our world by storm. There were storms, indeed ! Some personal, some sociological, some historical, even geographical, but I believe that most of us have weathered these challenges and survived to have made the world a better place. In the process, we have become better stronger, and hopefully, wiser people. I salute all of you, my fellow Boomer Survivors! We have lived through tumultuous and harrowing times, emotionally and physically, despite our supposed privileged Baby Boomer status. I am still wounded by the losses of Vietnam, and am grieved by ongoing conflicts and the necessity for them. I remember President Eisenhower's warning to "Beware of the Military Industrial Complex." Somehow, despite my Air Force Brat breeding and my passionate love of my country, I suspect he was correct, and that it is too late on too many fronts to change the direction of the financial tidal wave that threatens to swamp our Ship of State. I pray it is not. It will be up to the next generations to determine. This June, I attended the graduation of my brother's daughter from the Air Force Academy. She will now go on to pilot's training in C-130's. My father was an Air Force pilot, and I know he is very proud of her. Fifty years ago, I doubt many of our '66 female classmates could have imagined the future for women in flight. I certainly did not think of it as an option....but I would have loved it ! In my own life, I have survived forest fires, floods, the 1989 San Francisco Earthquake, marriages, a challenging hospice nursing career, a stint as a diplomat's wife, a run-in with a foreign intelligence officer, a fund raiser for a Norwegian-American Children's Charity, glacier-hiking, spouse's retirement, the death of both of my parents, my father in 2010 and my mother in December of 2012. I spent the years from 2009 to the very end of 2012 wintering in Arizona to assist my sister, Linda, in the care of our ailing and rapidly declining parents. As we worked together as our parents' caregivers, my sister and I became very close and gained a new respect and affection for each other, which was the ultimate gift from our parents' passing. It was excruciating to have to insist that my father, the old Air Force Colonel, give up his keys and stop driving. He never really understood the danger he was in at the time, but we both believe that he has forgiven us by now! My sister and I have learned that grieving is a process, much like a spiral staircase; not a straight upward trajectory. I am sure that all of ...Expand for more