Brookings Summer Arts Festival

This is the weekend for the Brookings Summer Arts Festival.  Some classes schedule their reunions to coincide with this event.  The classes of 1984 and 1979, for example, are meeting this weekend.  It's an opportunity for people who have not seen each other for a number of years to get together and reminiscence.  Some chance encounters prove to be rather fruitful. 

One such encounter occurred yesterday, when a  former student who was in town invited me to Nick's, where we met Denny Hauge, class of 1971.  He was on the championship wrestling teams of 1969 (whose co-captians were Dan Liebing and Craig Knock) and 1970. We then went to the SDSU alumni office to get permission to climb the steps of the campanile.  There is an all-encompassing view of the Brookings area from the top.   One benefit of stopping by the alumni office is that we received a certificate for a free ice-cream at the dairy bar.  While we were there, we were graced with the presence of Jan Sanderson, one of the leaders of those two championship teams, and perhaps the finest wrestler from BHS (http://local.brookings.k12.sd.us/activities/HOF/Jan%20Sanderson.pdf).  He told us about his collegiate wrestling career at the University of Iowa.  Jan was as perhaps as well-known for his knitting skills as for his expoits on the mat (http://www.hawkeyesports.com/sports/m-wrestl/spec-rel/041712aab.html). 

Later that night, my niece's 8-year old  son was playing in a baseball game.  One of the players on the other team was the grandson of Denise (Gabel) Christianson.  Denise would be Sandy Gabel's sister.  Their mother recently passed away (http://rudesfuneralhome.com/sitemaker/sites/RudesF1/obit.cgi?user=1323903Gabel).  Denise told me that Sandy was not pictured in our junior or senior annuals because they had been in Germany due to their father's military career.  She thought that they had returned in time for Sandy to graduate with us, but that it was too late for her picture to be included in the yearbook.