For the Parkdale High School class of 1977, a reunion tradition started with a joking comment on a Facebook post. Mark Felsher saw a picture of some classmates getting together, posted by a friend on Facebook. “Hey, you guys had a reunion and didn’t invite me,” he commented. This little joke turned serious, and in 1995 classmates who attended Greenbelt Center Elementary School together through sixth grade held a 25-year reunion for their graduation from Parkdale High School in Riverdale. Felsher estimates roughly 75 percent of that class went to Parkdale and graduated together in 1977. Now they’re planning a larger, 50-year reunion for the Parkdale class of ‘77 in September 2027.
Class of ‘77 History
Parkdale’s class of ‘77 went through multiple challenges and school changes to get to where they were their senior year: from Greenbelt Junior High to schools they were bused to as part of a desegregation effort, and finally to Parkdale, where they would remain for their final year when the other grades moved out to attend Greenbelt’s new high school, Eleanor Roosevelt High School (ERHS). A disjointed and disrupted high school experience created a tight-knit group of classmates who found their way back together as the final class of Greenbelt seniors to graduate from Parkdale.
Busing for Desegregation
In 1973, the cohort of students who had graduated from Center School were eighth graders attending Greenbelt Junior High School in the large white building at the intersection of Greenbelt Road and Edmonston Road that would later become Greenbelt Middle School, then Dora Kennedy French Immersion, and is temporarily housing Springhill Lake Elementary School students as a swing space this year. “We went to Greenbelt Junior High, started making new friends, and very quickly in the middle of eighth grade, we got sent to Mary McLeod Bethune,” Felsher said.
Mary McLeod Bethune Junior High was located in Capitol Heights, about 10 miles away. The students from Greenbelt Center were bused together to Mary McLeod Bethune as part of the court-ordered desegregation effort. Students from other communities remained at Greenbelt Junior High. (See the December 28, 1972 and the January 11, 1973 issues for reporting on the busing decision when it was announced.)
“We weren’t around our new friends anymore, so we were back together in a strange place again,” Felsher said of the group who had attended Center School together and found themselves bused to a new school. Felsher says the group began making friends at Mary McLeod
Bethune, but the Greenbelt students left their Mary McLeod Bethune classmates behind when they started at Parkdale in the fall of 1974. “Again, we were separated from our new friends we had made,” said Felsher. Mary McLeod Bethune classmates went on to Fairmont Heights High School instead.
Two years later, in 1976, ERHS opened in Greenbelt. That year the school district sent all Greenbelt’s sophomores and juniors to the city’s new high school, leaving the class of ’77 as the only students still attending Parkdale. They would be the final cohort of Greenbelt students to graduate from Parkdale. (Today some Greenbelt students continue to attend Parkdale for its International Baccalaureate program but ERHS is the city’s boundary school.)
Among the students sent to ERHS when it opened were Felsher’s younger siblings. He stayed at Parkdale, which removed them from his day-to-day routine. He knew little about what was going on at his siblings’ new school, since he estimated he spent around 10 hours a day on Parkdale-related activities. “It became easier to talk with my classmates than with my own siblings about school things,” Felsher said.
“We were seniors when they opened up Eleanor Roosevelt,” Felsher said. Yet again they were separated from the friends they had made outside the class that had stayed together since Center School. “Friends I had made at Parkdale who were younger than me went to Eleanor Roosevelt, so it was a very, I’ll say, isolating time for the Greenbelt class of 1977.”
The Greenbelt seniors grew unusually close. “It really gave us more time to focus on one another,” Felsher said.
This proved true when 74 of the 77 classmates who attended Greenbelt Center Elementary School showed up to the 25-year reunion.
Finding the Class of ’77
After the class’ 25-year reunion, they made it a mission to have a 50-year reunion, which will be held on September 11, 2027, at Martin’s Crosswinds.
Ann Baer, the reunion’s database manager, said that she had a happy time at Parkdale. “For me it’s the friendships I made. I love reconnecting with some people, and when I look back, there was a wide variety of students at Parkdale.”
Baer and Felsher alternate reaching out to classmates they find. Together, they have reduced the number of unaccounted-for classmates from the overall graduating class from 335 to about 230 over the past three months, finding about one classmate a day.
That earlier reunion of the sixth-grade class of Center School was a smaller gathering, specifically for the classmates who attended Center Elementary School together. It was lively and exciting, while the upcoming reunion will be a more intimate reunion, believes Felsher. Classmates have aged, had children, grandchildren and retired. The most upsetting part of planning the reunion is finding out who has died.
The emotional toll weighs heavily on them. “Emotionally, finding people who’ve died, people that you’re fond of,” Baer said, is the hardest part of the process. “Someone that had once meant something to me, and then just people that you lose touch with, but were very fond of in high school that you would have loved to see again but find out that they’re gone. That’s one of the hardest things.”
This reunion could be the last time some of the class of ’77 are all together, Felsher said. “It’s a much deeper reunion.” The 25th reunion of the Center School group was a lot of fun, he told the News Review. “This one will have some fun, but there’s going to be a much deeper meaning as well,” Felsher said.
There have been happy surprises, too. While searching for classmates, Felsher has found unexpected connections, including one of his classmates who lived on the other side of Raleigh, N.C., from him.
The reunion’s success depends on how many classmates show up, say organizers.
Looking Forward
Planning for the 50-year reunion is far from fully complete. Ticket links are expected to go out next month for those Parkdale ’77 classmates who are planning to attend. Classmates who would like more information, are asked to reach out to parkdale77reunion@gmail.com with any questions or concerns.
As the date approaches, Felsher finds himself looking back as well as forward. “The reunion is a reminder of a more energetic and innocent time. It is nice to revisit those days with one another — but we don’t want to go back. We have learned too much to want to go back to the naive confidence of youth,” Felsher said.
Claudia Stuart is a University of Maryland student at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism interning with the Greenbelt News Review.
