Renwick Connolly delivers the keynote address.

By Mwangi Ngamate
Mwangi@caymannetnews.com 

Alumni of the Class of ‘79 students of Cayman Islands High School, teachers and spouses reunited to celebrate 30 years since graduation, at the Wharf Restaurant on Saturday, 19 September.

The 162 former students of the school, now known as John Gray High School, also held moments of silence in memory of 16 colleagues who have since died.

“The Class of 79 has been especially and unusually hard hit by the specter of untimely and premature deaths, averaging more than one every two years for these last thirty years,” noted Renwick Connolly who gave the evening’s keynote address.

Mr Connolly said it was with great joy that those attending were having a homecoming once more, as a family that has been spread far and wide by the passage of time.

“The thirty-year mark was much too important a milestone to us sentimental fools to let it go by unheralded, and so here we are this evening, attempting to reap whatever meagre fruit our humble efforts were able to muster,” he said.

“Let there be no doubt that we are a family, one that had its conception in the autumn of 1974, when bug-eyed and trepid we gathered in the assembly hall to receive our initiation address, and reached its maturity in the summer of 1979, when we finally departed those comforting class rooms and the loving care of our teachers, to go out and find our way in what often times proved to be a perplexing world,” Mr Connolly said in his address.

“It is my fervent hope this evening that we can for one short moment in time, cast aside our worries and sorrows, woes and wants, our political differences, pious religious mores, differences in our commercial and academic achievements, and other cares and concerns for but an hour or four, and indulge wholeheartedly, unabashedly, and without reservation in this our very own celebration of having made the journey this far,” said Mr Connolly.

Alumni member, Rex Watler accompanied by his band, entertained the audience.