Todd Swank: Clear Lake Iowa Class of 1988

July 15, 2018

Clear Lake Iowa Class of 1988 - 30 Year Class Reunion

Todd Swank's Diary Entry for July 15, 2018

I can't believe it's been 30 years since I graduated high school. Where does the time go? Miss Sheri and I traveled down to Clear Lake, Iowa this weekend to go visit old friends and celebrate being old.

Quite naturally, I hooked up with the fellows before heading to the reunion. Ron "Sugarman" Myers, "Krazy" Kory Madson, and I have many, many great memories together in high school.

There's never quite as many people show up as you hope you'll get to see, but we had about 20 or so classmates come to the festivities. On Friday night, we started at the Other Place and just had a lot of fun with one another catching up on things.

I don't get to see these folks all that often any more, but when we reconnect, it's like we haven't missed a moment. We just instantly start having fun together again.

We even had a couple of our former teachers and coaches make an appearance like Mr. Suntken here. I ran cross country for Mr. Suntken back in high school and was really, really bad at it. God definitely did not intend for me to be a long distance runner.

At the end of the night, we ended up at the Surf District where I was thrilled to discover they were having Karaoke. We had so much fun singing and dancing! Craig Larsen is one of our classmates and is the lead singer in a popular Iowa band. He absolutely stole the show with his rendition of ACDC's "Big Balls". Just killed it.

On Saturday, we had even less classmates show up for our cruise on the Lady of the Lake. I'm guessing a lot of people were sleeping off the late night karaoke party. Those of us who showed up though had an awesome time.

I was excited to have the opportunity to spend some time with legendary Clear Lake Wrestling Coach, Gary Weber. I wrestled in high school and Gary started coaching the year after I graduated. He want on to have an amazing career that spanned 28 years and a nomination into the Iowa National Wrestling Hall of Fame due to all of his success. It was great hearing a bunch of his old war stories about being a coach and teacher at CLHS.

I hadn't seen Ron's whole family in quite awhile, so it was great getting to spend some time with them. I couldn't believe how big and athletic all of his kids have become. It's like a whole swarm of sugar people.

The boat ride only lasted 90 minutes or so, but we had several fun stories that were generated by it.

We had dinner at PM Park and a new group of people arrived that we hadn't seen yet, so all new chances to share stories and updates for another night.

Tami and Debbie organized our reunion this time around and I loved that they made this table to honor our classmates who are no longer with us. It was a very classy and touching move.

We even had a classmate who couldn't make the trip from Boston join us live via Facetime. That's certainly something we couldn't have done back in 1988.

Pretty soon the sun went down and it was time to say our goodbyes for another 5 years. It sure will be fun to see what new adventures life brings us all in that time.

While we were away, Luke and Avery celebrated their 19th birthday! It just doesn't seem possible that they are only 1 year away from no longer being teenagers!