MANSFIELD — Robin McCollough-Bade wanted to do more than host a gatheringfor her classmates at Malabar. She wanted to give back.
McCollough-Bade and her high school classmates Sandra Homer and Susan Smith presented a check for $3,373 to Malabar Intermediate Principal Tom Hager earlier this month.
The women were part of an impromptu committee that hosted a 50-year class reunion earlier this summer.
Guests at the Malabar High School Class of 1973 reunion donated the funds.
Hager said the funds will be used to purchase educational tools for the special education department and a piece of furniture for the school library.
Nearly 33 percent of Malabar’s students have a disability, according to the most recent Ohio School Report Card.
“We need certain resources to fit those students’ needs,” Hager said.
The class of 1973 also donated a children’s book to the library called Love Your Light.
McCollough-Bade, Homer and Smith have all spent time working in schools.
“Teaching is tough,” McCollough-Bade said. “Hopefully this gift will just enhance the solid work that’s already being done.”
“It was just like we were at our senior prom”
The 50th class reunion started with a chance encounter. McCollough-Bade, who now resides in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, ran into a classmate during a visit to Mansfield.
“We thought, we certainly should have a reunion, right?” she recalled. “We hoped somebody else would be planning it, but there didn’t seem to be any interest.”
What started as a group of three grew to a committee of seven, including McCollough-Bade, Homer, Smith, Cindy (Rowe) Baker, Yvonne (Yingling) Donnenwirth, Steve Jones, Dave Mangan, and Robin Smith.
Tracking down classmates required some teamwork, since the last class reunion had taken place 20 years ago.
“The three of us met and we realized we had no database and no money,” McCollough-Bade recalled. “We had not seen these people for decades, a lifetime, basically.”
In the end, 77 people attended, including 50 classmates and their partners. People traveled from 12 different states to attend.
“I think we all felt really relaxed with each other,” Smith said. “It was really neat hearing what they had done, where their job carried them.
“It was just like we were at our senior prom.”
The reunion began with a tour of Malabar Intermediate, the former high school building that now educates third thru sixth graders.
“The class, they were so impressed with the facility,” McCollough-Bade said. ‘I kept hearing about the gym, the swimming pool — everything looks so good.”
The reunion also included a dinner at the Ontario Event Center and a candle lighting ceremony to remember the 35 classmates who have passed away.
The group said the key to hosting a fun reunion was creating a welcoming, laid-back atmosphere. McCollough-Bade kicked off the event by telling her classmates there were no hard feelings if no one remembered her name.
“I told them there’s a rumor going around that the class of 1973 is the most fascinating class that we had at Malabar — it’s a rumor I started — and that they have the opportunity this weekend to find out who these fascinating people are,” she said.