Defying the odds
All in high school class alive six decades later
“We always joke that we are all still alive and how lucky we are. We see it as something to strive for. But we did nothing. It was a gift.” Del Matheson
MILFORD, Iowa — Del Matheson was preparing the mailing list for his high school class’s 60-year reunion when an improbable thought occurred to him: What are the odds that all 14 graduates were still alive? He figured it was 1-in-a-million shot, considering they’re all ages 77 to 79, that no one had died from a car wreck, heart attack or cancer. Matheson was wrong: It’s a 1-in-177,467,459 chance.
For comparison, that’s better than the chance of winning the Powerball, said David Herzog, Iowa State University assistant professor of mathematics, and “it is way less likely than an individual being struck by lightning twice in a lifetime (1 in 9 million odds).”
“We all talk about who will be the first to die,” Matheson said. “It’s like a contest.”
It appears no one wants to lose and disappoint the Ringsted High School class of 1958.
Kenneth Pedersen said he nearly ruined this story when he woke up one morning last March to an aortic aneurysm. He spent nearly three months in the hospital, hanging by a thread, but he survived. His wife, Betty, had only one explanation.
“He’s ornery,” she said of the man classmates labeled the class clown.
Perhaps it’s due to membership in the class of ’58, which should be studied by longevity experts. Though they are squarely at the age of life expectancy today in the USA — 78.8 — the law of averages should mean at least a few are gone.
They started out like most kids in rural Iowa, walking to class, doing farm chores and eating from the garden in a northwest Iowa town that once was big enough to have schools and ample business but today is “twice the size of nothing,” Matheson said.
The class has outlived its high school building, which was bulldozed, and reunions often take place in a surviving tavern where conversation often gets around to still breathing.
“We always joke that we are all still alive and how lucky we are. We see it as something to strive for. But we did nothing. It was a gift,” said Matheson, the ringleader in keeping the class connected across the country from his home in Eugene, Ore.
The keys to beating such long odds circled the table over coffee recently with class members Judy (Pedersen) Eisenbacher of Spencer, Lois (Jensen) Platter of Graettinger and Eileen (Emmick) Harkema, a Spencer woman who cried when she had to move before her senior year but is still allowed unofficial membership in the long-living class.
Among the reasons: They were a class of low-key kids who took life as it came; they worked hard and were physically active; they have no alcoholics among them and few smokers.
Sure, there have been divorces, hip replacements and spouses’ deaths to endure, but a sense of belonging to something bigger than themselves sank into their bones and helped lead to a long life, class members said.
They were like family and are family, including three cousins and two brothers.
The reunions every five years are typically attended by the entire class and several teachers.
Ken Pedersen of Gowrie worked 43 years in natural gas, raised children and survived. He will be happy to see his good buddy Karl Fliehler of Texas, the class valedictorian, and all the others.
He looks at the 1958 high school annual at the kitchen table, and tears form in his eyes. He shed his cane recently, but it’s still tough for him to form all his thoughts; he lost a lot of blood and goes to speech therapy.
Maybe it was togetherness that kept them all alive, across six states and over six decades.
When Pedersen was in the hospital, he got calls from every single classmate.