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Class Reunion: The Podcast, Crane, MO (2026)

03/04/2022

Hello, classmates and friends! It has been a while since I posted on this account, but I am back today to share some exciting news: “Class Reunion: The Podcast” was featured in today’s Springfield News-Leader! Reporter (and fellow small town Missouri native) took an interest in the show and wrote this AMAZING story about how the podcast all came together and how it culminated in that wonderful in-person reunion last fall. (She even wrote about the bonfire at Kirk’s and ’s observation about how far we’ve all come in our relationships with each other.) And yes, it is my dream to revisit this podcast again, with the hope that I can eventually interview all of our classmates. Thank you so much for your continued support and cheerleading for this show — and our ever-changing community of classmates. Sending much love to you all! ❤️

Check out the story on the website or pick up a copy if you live in the area! Thanks, Greta, for taking such great care with this piece!

12/01/2021

It’s ! Did you know that “Class Reunion: The Podcast” has supported nearly a dozen nonprofits and charity groups, thanks to sponsors and folks who have signed up on Patreon?

I wanted to make sure that this show did more than look back at the past. I wanted to do what I could to support folks who are shaping the future of the Ozarks and beyond.

All season long, I was writing checks to groups on behalf of the classmates featured on the show. It was a great honor to contribute what I could, and I hope to repeat this initiative in any future seasons of the show.

If YOU want to support these donations, go to Patreon.com/classreunionpodcast to chip in as little as $3 per month. I’ll keep the Patreon open through next August, which will mark a year since the show launched.

(There’s still time to sponsor bonus episodes, which will be rolling out next year!)

11/30/2021

Conservation areas like this one on Crane Creek offer free access to some of Missouri’s beautiful wilderness. This one’s called Wire Road, and the trail loops through the woods to the creek, where it was warm enough (barely) for my youngest to dip his toes in the water. We also found a huge oyster mushroom growing on a tree next to the water. I’d never been on this trail, even though Aurora is just a few miles up the road!

11/30/2021

Found the roller skating rink! I have not been able to determine when it closed, but I found out recently that it was open as early as the 1930s/40s! (You’ll have to listen for that story in an upcoming bonus episode with a certain booster who is one of the most recognizable people in Aurora today.)

11/30/2021

Class of 2001, representing this Friendsgiving! Hope everyone had a great holiday week. I’ll share some fun photos from Missouri over the next week here. Bob, who is featured in episode No. 14, lives in Northeast Missouri now, and we got to spend part of the weekend together with his wife and new kiddo.

11/17/2021

Is it time for another reunion yet? Debbie, right, was our last classmate episode featured in this season of the podcast, but maybe I can get Clarissa and Kim lined up for the next? When will that be?? I have no idea, but looking through reunion pics makes me so glad I can call these people friends. Not former classmates, but current buddies that I can exchange random GIFs with on Facebook. Kim and I Facetimed making dinner last month, and it was for sure a highlight of my week. Have you ever been to a reunion and it sparked new friendships? Or maybe even new love? I’d love to hear about it!

11/16/2021

Last little gem from First Independent Bank. Jack Muench’s wife painted this scene of Aurora, with the iconic mill on the right and the train that brought so many people, goods and growth to this little pocket of Southwest Missouri. It’s the view from Baldwin Park/Old Marionville Road.

At 1,401 ft, it is, indeed, the Summit City of the Ozarks. Springfield comes in at 1,299 ft, and Branson is a whopping 700 ft lower in elevation (774).

I’ve come to realize that this particular spot in Southwest Missouri is exactly where the Midwest ends and the South begins. Just 10 miles south, you’re in the Ozark Mountains, which is really the northernmost part of what most Southerners might call the South. (I just met a woman from Winslow, Arkansas recently who has helped confirmed this theory about the North/South line.)

11/15/2021

Aurora flashback, part 2: More photos from the collection at First Independent Bank in Aurora. (Seriously, go check out these photos if you are in town. They so so beautiful to see in large format prints on the wall.)

These are the men and women who called Aurora home, including one of the town’s founders (Stephen Elliott, right, in that second photo. I think that’s Elliott’s mom in the middle).

One of the photos says: “The boys and girls who make business good at the shoe factory.” I know plenty of these folks still have ties to the town now. It would be amazing to find their relatives and show them these images.

11/15/2021

Aurora flashback, part 1: This amazing collection of photos is on display at the First Independent Bank on Elliott Street in Aurora, where hometown pride is on display in the form of these stunning images. There are so many, I am going to split them into two posts.

These are what I’ll call the kid photos. Some of these school photos were taken at White Oak School, which was a rural school on the east side of town. That main building in the back of the first photo? That’s the original Aurora High School, and it was still standing in the late 1990s. We called that the A wing, and it full of these big tall classrooms and was *so* old.

They eventually tore it down, but we spent countless hours going up and down those stairs and staring out those huge windows.

11/11/2021

The Maple Park Cemetery in Aurora has a small plaza honoring the military veterans from the town, including those who fought in the Civil War.

Missouri is famously the compromise state, winning statehood on 1821 as the only state north of Mason-Dixon Line where it was legal to enslave people. By the time the Civil War started, Missourians enlisted in both the Union and the Confederacy. These bricks make no distinction. Do we?

There are so many underlying questions and even tensions when you start a project like this podcast. How much digging do we do? Where is the line between the personal and the political? What are the universal truths that we agree on? Whose narrative is missing from this cemetery? Whose voices are missing from this podcast?

On Veteran’s Day, my heart feels grateful for veterans who have entered into unthinkable situations to sort out unthinkable crises. To face individual fears for the benefit of the collective. To put aside one’s personal safety to compromise another’s.

Freedom isn’t free, but where is freedom in conscription, enslavement and bloody battles like the one at Wilson’s Creek in nearby Republic? (It’s actually in a town called Battlefield, which is the name of a thoroughfare in Springfield and, with zero irony, the city’s mall.)

These aren’t questions that have concrete answers, but they are ones that come up when we have the courage to enter into this dialogue. Not to engage in battle, though. I didn’t want this show to feel combative in any way, but I know that asking questions like this brings us into an uncomfortable place.

We are living lives that these ancestors couldn’t have imagined. Can we have conversations that are also equally as evolved? That’s the space I’m carving out with this lil show. Thank you to all the veterans out there, both living and dead, who might have shared this desire for unity, equity and, yes, freedom.

11/11/2021

By the old Jenkins school, a reminder of how much geography plays a role in small town life.

Aurora is surrounded by rural areas and even smaller communities whose kids sometimes went to Aurora and sometimes went to Monett or Mt. Vernon or Crane. (When the Jenkins school closed, its students split between Aurora and Cassville.)

The country kids, like my recent guest Bobby, had a different experience than the town kids, but we also all intertwined. None of us felt like city kids, that’s for sure. I remember using a subway in New York for the first time or traveling to Europe and wondering if anyone from my town had ever done that. But had any of them gone to EE bridge? Or swam in the lake at Shell K**b? Or found the waterfall on the Nat, where the Aurora plateau gave way to the hollers of the Ozarks? (Anyone know why that backroad was called the Nat?)

11/11/2021

1999 Miss Holly Tiffany is on the “Class Reunion” bucket list! *Every* classmate is on the podcast bucket list, but especially Tiffany, a high school pageant winner, dancer and cheerleader who taught me the joys of drinking pickle juice. (Isn’t it weird the memories we keep in our brains?) Who would you want to hear from in future episodes? Wouldn’t it be interesting to do a class from each decade?

Class Reunion: The Podcast

03/04/2022

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11/30/2021

11/17/2021

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