SET THE DATE NOTICE FOR 2013/45TH REUNION

Dear Classmate,

Your friends, our GHS 68 Reunion Committee, have had our first business meeting in three years, and started reunion planning. We ask you, first and foremost, to hold open the weekend of June 21-23, 2013, for our 45th Class Reunion. No, we’re not crazy. It’s just that when we announced the date for our 40th in 2008, about one year in advance, we already had some conflicts with classmates’ plans for their annual family reunion or children’s weddings. Now, those are very important events, so we didn’t expect anyone to move a wedding or cancel their other reunion. We are hoping, though, to announce our next GHS reunion in plenty of time to allow anyone inclined to do so, to gently steer those other events to dates around it. These remaining nineteen months will likely fly by!

If that strikes anyone as presumptuous or just plain silly, we apologize. It just reflects the strength of our desire to get as many classmates as possible together and to have as happy an event in 2013 as we did three years ago.

In that regard, we are contacting as many classmates as possible, first to be sure we can get in touch and also to ask for your help locating other classmates that we are not yet in touch with. If your contact information has changed, please let me know with your reply. We hope to add a Facebook page to our contact efforts as well as continue to use the Reunion Blog site at http://ghs68.blogspot.com (Jimmy continues to update it) and to periodically send out key information by first class mail. Before long, we’ll start planning and letting you know the reunion details. You’ll be hearing from us!

The Class of 1968 is still making an impact at GHS as well as in Gainesville and wherever else classmates are found around the country and the world. We are active seniors and seniors-to-be, hard-working professionals and business leaders, raising children and mostly grandchildren now, and loving life. Many have retired or see retirement right around the corner. We mourn our deceased classmates and plan to recognize them again with a memorial service at the reunion, and we grieve with other classmates as we lose parents and loved ones or struggle with health issues and aging. At GHS, our class continues to recognize a student and teacher each year with the Class of 1968 Senior Writing Prize. Jim and Bill presented our sixth annual award last June, this year to a young man who is already a published poet, and to his teacher, in honor of all the great teachers we had.

Time marches on! Soon we’ll be greeting you on Friday night at some large Gainesville hotspot to kickoff a fine weekend party like we haven’t seen for, well, the last three years. Please save the dates:

GHS Class of 1968 - 45th CLASS REUNION

JUNE 21-23, 2013

In Gainesville



We’d love to see you there! We’ll be in touch.



YOUR REUNION COMMITTEE:

Susan Hazen Balloon

Jim Conner

Robbie Davis ’77

Bill Harlan

Jackie Cooter Hoover

Joe Hudson, retired GHS principal, has died. RIP, Mr. Hudson

HUDSON, JOSEPH

Joseph "Joe" Thomas Hudson, Jr., age 88 of Gainesville, FL passed away in Gainesville on Thursday September 1, 2011. Joe was born in Jacksonville, FL on August 17, 1923.

He served in the U S Army during WWII, in both the African and European Theatres. Following the war he returned to Gainesville and married Virginia Elizabeth Munson and attended the University of Florida. He received his Bachelor's degree in English and History, and also a Master's degree in Education. He began his career by teaching school in Arcadia, then in Crystal River where he also coached basketball. They moved back to Gainesville in 1953 and he was a counselor for the juvenile court system before becoming the Assistant Principal at Gainesville High School. Later he became the Principal at GHS, and then the Principal at Terwilliger, finally retiring in 1985 as the Principal at Williams Elementary School.

Joe was a member of the First Baptist Church, the Gainesville Lions Club, and worked for over 40 years in the University of Florida's Press Box during football games.

He is survived by his wife of 63 years, Betty Hudson, his daughter Elizabeth Salter and her husband Jeff Salter, and his granddaughter Alexandra Salter.

Graveside Services will be held at 2:00 PM on Tuesday September 6, 2011 at 2:00 PM at Evergreen Cemetery 401 SE 21st Avenue Gainesville, FL with military honors. Milam Funeral and Cremation Services 311 South Main Street Gainesville, FL 32601 (352) 376-5361

Hinson obituary link is below

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/gainesville/obituary.aspx?n=richard-hinson&pid=150439222&fhid=4014