The Har-Brack mascot was the tiger. Since there probably never were any tigers historically living in this area, except perhaps the saber-toothed tigers, I have selected a new mascot for this evening which does live on this continent and which lives close to this area. It is the 17-year Cicada, Brood 2, which pops up out of the ground every 17 years, makes one heck of a racket, and then goes into hibernation again.

            In looking at the appearances of the Cicada across our lifespan, and using the dates as arbitrary but somewhat useful markers, we can set them against the major phases of our own lives.

            Mark Twain liked to use Halley’s Comet as the bookends of his life; he came into the world with the comet in 1835 and he died the year it returned in 1910. We, the class of 1963, are marked by another natural phenomenon: the 17 year cicada, a bug that outnumbers the regional human population by 600 to 1. This eastern coast phenomenon appeared the year of our birth, 1945; and here it is again, at our 50^th high school anniversary. Of course it also appeared in 1962, the year we turned 16 and again in 1979 and also in 1996. After 2013 those little creatures won’t be with us again until we turn 85 and then the little bugs will be hungry again, hormonal, and looking for love. We should be so lucky.

            1945. Year of the Cicada. Also the year the war ended. Our steel mills were booming. Our dads were hard at work, and our moms were home taking care of us. My dad’s Scots-Irish family had already been in western Pennsylvania for 150 years. Mom’s parents were still speaking only Polish and Russian in their home. So when I reached first grade it is no wonder I needed speech therapy…I didn’t know whether I should be speaking in Polish, Russian, or with a brogue.

            1962. Year of the Cicada. Pittsburgh native Rachael Carson’s book The Silent Spring was published, and became the most popularly read book in the U.S. Pittsburgh was expanding its Renaissance. And the Cicada was making a racket, and so were we. We were seniors, learning to drive and thinking, or not thinking (as the case may be) about our future.  The steel mills were still booming, and many of us decided to stay in the area for a guaranteed job. Some of us decided to go to college.  I decided to attend college. Dad had only gone through 8^th grade, so my decision to go on to college was as momentous for him as it was for me.

            1979. Year of the Cicada. Margaret Thatcher becomes the first female prime minister of Great Britain. McDonald’s introduces The Happy Meal.  We are 34 years old and we are again making one heck of a racket. Pittsburgh Steelers defeat the Dallas Cowboys for the Super Bowl. Later in the year the Pittsburgh Pirates defeat the Orioles for the World Series. We are hooting and hollering, whether we still live in PA or not. The unemployment rate drops to a low of 5.6% and we are making a lot of noise about that too.

            1996. Year of the Cicada We are 51 years old and we are in the middle years of our lives. Weather is in the news this year. The blizzard of ’96 left eastern parts of the U.S. with as much as 40” of snow. This area only got about 10”, but we got severe flooding in Pittsburgh which ended up being declared a federal disaster area. All of this weather didn’t seem to put a dent in the Cicada Brood 2 turnout. They were as loud and numerous as ever. None of us probably paid much attention to those little Cicada as kids, families, and jobs took center stage.

            2013. Year of the Cicada. The U.S. is out of recession. Pittsburgh is an economic hothouse as a medical and tech innovator, and the city that once defined ‘rust belt decay’ diversified its economic base and is now showing other cities how to do it. A special report in the world-renowned magazine, The Economist, states that Allegheny Technologies (now known as ATI Allegheny Ludlum) is spending 1.1 billion on new mills to produce stainless steel and other specialty metals. We turn 68. Most of us are retired. Many of us are happy about that, including me.

            The Cicadas, the little bugs we’ve been talking about, are all about themselves, not their group, and not their community. And that is the difference between these little bugs and us. Because no matter how we have spent our lives to date, how we have made choices about our lives, about what we have done, and who we have loved, and what community we chose to be part of, this weekend we are part of the CLASS OF ’63. And tonight there is no community better than this one.

Thank you.

Bonnie M. Bole Orkow