Making New Friends

Moran  – Making New Friends

The Days Forward has been a wonderful expansion and enrichment of my appreciation of our classmates and spouses.  Many of us have noted over the years that we knew very few classmates outside our regiment, or at best, outside 1^st and 3^rd or 2nd and 4^th, because that was the way our classes were ordered.  There also were friendships forged in athletics and extracurricular

activities, but those were relatively small in number. And so throughout our careers, we often said or heard the remark, “I never knew him as a cadet.”  

At reunions there were chances to get to know some others.  I remember having great conversations with two different bus seatmates between various reunion activities. Likewise sitting with folks at a reunion breakfast or lunch I got to know a few more classmates and spouses.

But with the advent of The Days Forward, the ability to read stories from a wide variety of classmates and spouses was now at our fingertips.  The names, pictures and stories of those we hadn’t ever met came into my life as welcome guests. The ability to respond to another’s story is another feature of The Days Forward which I really like. Beyond expanding my appreciation of our classmates and spouses, there is a quality of enrichment.  I am enriched by knowing this person’s experience of Checkpoint Charlie, another’s doing scientific work in Antarctica, and several others’ accounts of what they were doing on September 11, 2001.  I tend to get hooked on The Days Forward stories and end up reading another and another and another. I am enriched by all of this, and at this vantage point in life (78 years and counting), it is a blessing to appreciate more and more of our class.  The Days Forward has given us all a great gift!