COVID outbreak puts reunions on hold
Tom Smith doesn’t wait for a major anniversary year to get together with his old classmates from Grandview Heights High School.
Smith, the president of the high school’s alumni association, is a regular attendee to the alumni weekend hosted every September at the school, as well as a monthly luncheon for graduates at MCL Restaurant & Bakery
in Upper Arlington. The regular meet-ups offer a chance for Smith and his classmates from the graduating class of 1963 to catch up on their lives and reminisce about high school memories.
“Just to see what’s happened to them,” said Smith, 75, who lives in Delaware County. “We’re at the age now we’re someone has a new hip or someone has died or someone is on their fourth great-grandkid.”
But now, all of that — the alumni weekend, the regular luncheons, and the myriad milestone high school reunions — are up in the air as the coronavirus pandemic lingers on. Many Grandview Heights graduating classes have rescheduled their typical summer reunions for October, but Smith knows the likelihood of the gatherings taking place this fall are slim.
“I’m hopefully optimistic, but I’m also a realist,” Smith said.
Under state law, properties are reappraised every six years, with an update on some conducted three years afterward. The last full reappraisal in Franklin County was conducted in 2017; the update is being completed this year, with the next full reappraisal set for 2023.
The process ensures properties are being taxed at their present values. This year’s updated values will be based on sales data and trends from 2017, ’18 and ’19. Central Ohio’s real estate market boomed during that time.
And while the volume of sales is lower because of the coronavirus pandemic, prices have remained steady.
“This is a good thing,” Stinziano said. “You want this large investment in your life to be continuing to appraise up.”
(The increasing assessed values don’t necessarily mean higher property taxes, however, due to the state’s reduction factor and other calculations used to determine tax bills.)
Anyone looking to reconnect with their high school classes to celebrate a milestone anniversary are in the same position. Across central Ohio, many alumni associations are postponing reunions for next summer in the hopes that the threat of the virus' spread will have waned.
The Hamilton Township High School Alumni Association typically hosts an annual banquet in May, during which the 50th and 60th anniversary classes schedule their reunions to coincide. However, the group canceled this year's banquet in April, said Association President Linda Hetenhouser Dillman, a 1974 graduate.
“We have many graduates who fall into the higher-risk category and did not want to endanger their health and safety,” Hetenhouser Dillman, 64, said. ”We have many dedicated graduates who attend the banquet every year and I am hopeful that we can celebrate together next year.“
Worthington resident Christy Dewees was looking forward to celebrating her 30th high school reunion with the graduating class of 1990 from what was then called Worthington High School (now Thomas Worthington High School). However, Dewees, who was leading the planning for the celebration, canceled the reunion in the middle of May.
“It was kind of exciting that we were going to all get together,” Dewees, 48, said. “We were a pretty tight-knit group so it’s pretty good to still be connected.”
It was a letdown for Dewees, who has attended all her high school reunions every five years. But the class will instead have a 31st reunion celebration next summer, and a few of her former classmates will still gather for a less-formal outing to a nearby restaurant this August.
“I think we made the right decision,” Dewees said, “but it’s a disappointment.”
Before cancellations, most of Upper Arlington High School's reunions would have taken place during the suburb's celebrations surrounding the Fourth of July. Classes often have three days of reunion festivities with golf outings, dinners and cookouts, culminating with an open house and mixer at the high school.
The high school will soon be demolished to make way for a brandnew building opening on the same campus as early as next year, so this year might have been the last opportunity to convene there, said Alice Finley, the executive director of the alumni association, who is not a UA alumna herself but whose two sons graduated in 2011 and 2014. (She’s a 1980 graduate of Hamilton Township
High School.)
“When that opportunity was taken away, that was disappointing,” Finley, 57, said. “We were really looking forward to one last event at our high school and bringing alums in.” elagatta@dispatch.com @Ericlagatta