Social distancing and class reunions are not a good match
For Rachna Khare, the president of the graduating class at Kempner High School in Sugar Land in 2000, the coronavirus outbreak put her in a position she never would have imagined.
The guiding force behind a successful 10-year reunion, Khare had been gearing up for her 20-year gathering. An early-May date was set long in advance — the plan was to avoid Houston’s sizzling summer weather — and she was hearing from classmates near and far who were looking forward to the event.
“We were ready for a good party,” Khare said. “It was going to be fun. Humans are social creatures. We wanted to get back together after 10 years.”
But social distancing and class reunions are not a good match.
Khare is executive director of Daya Houston, an organization that aids South Asian women living in the Houston area who are survivors of domestic violence or sexual assault. Through her work, she has become finely attuned to how people are affected both psychologically and physically by their environment.
Rather than look to reschedule in the fall, she decided to postpone the event until next year. She’ll join forces with the Kempner 2001 class for a combined reunion, provided COVID-19 is no longer a concern.
“I think it was the best call to make,” she said. “I know that people want to reunite. But I don’t want them to have question marks in their head: ‘Should I go? Will it be safe? Am I irresponsible if I do go?’
“It wouldn’t reflect well on my values, my character, to hold what’s supposed to be a fun event at such an uncertain time. The optics just weren’t right.”
High school alumni classes across the country are having to make similar decisions. Summer traditionally marks the beginning of “reunion season,” which normally runs through October. At least, that was the usual time frame, pre-pandemic.
“For us, the general rule is that we get really going in July, but general has flown out the window,” said Lynn Thompson, president of the National Association of Reunion Managers and owner of Reunion Specialists, a high-school-reunion planning company that serves Southern California.
“Even if we wanted to start holding some events right now, we can’t. Gov. (Gavin) Newsom’s current stay-at-home order limits gatherings to a small number of people. Obviously, that doesn’t work for a reunion.”
Thompson says some of her reunion groups have opted to postpone their events until later in the year in the hope that there will be a “safe window” for 100 or more people to assemble. Other reunion classes, believing that “everything is just too iffy right now,” will try again next year.
“Classes are doing very different things,” Thompson added. “The future is unknown. We just have to live with that.”
The pandemic comes at a particularly inopportune time for the class-reunion business. For the past decade, attendance per event has been declining, as have the number of reunions held overall. That’s largely because of the growth of social media in general, and Facebook in particular. Classmates can keep in touch digitally and don’t feel compelled to invest time and money to attend a reunion in person.
Edith Wagner, editor and publisher of Milwaukee-based Reunions Magazine, is painfully aware of the effects of COVID-19 on reunions.
Wagner started the magazine in 1988 as a “goto guide” for organizing all types of reunions, including high school, college, family and military. For much of that time, the publication regularly sold out of ad space, enabling her to make “a very comfortable” living.
“We often grossed $100,000 or more per issue,” said Wagner, 85. “No complaints. And actually, we were expecting to have a pretty good year this year. With the (Democratic National Convention) coming here in August, our ad revenue early in the year was way up.”
But then the virus took hold, prompting most of the sponsors to bail out. In September, the magazine ended its print edition and moved to online only. The ramifications of the coronavirus outbreak — including the steep reduction in air travel and related advertising — likely will signal the end of a 32-year “labor of love.” This month’s issue is expected to be the last.
“I didn’t figure I’d be doing this forever,” Wagner lamented. “But I didn’t figure it would end this way either.”