After singing songs for my classmates I began to talk about my experiences in high school. I laughed as I told them that my high school experience might be summed up in four words. God, Music, Girls, and Football. Then I became a little more serious and explained that not that much had changed except the words I would use are Faith, Hope, Love, and Family. Then I sang a song with that as the title.
Then I began to tell stories and give meaning to each of those words. I talked about how I grew up going to church and Sunday school and Young Life camps before having everything I believed being thrown into doubt in my early 20's. And though faith returned in a different form I could say once again that "faith is strong, hope is high, joy abounds, and love abides."
The came a very special moment in the concert. I welcomed the three other people I had first sung with onto the stage where we first sang together some sixty years earlier. We sang a Tom Paxton song, "Can't Help But Wonder Where I'm Bound." It was something very special to sing one more time in that place with those very special people.
As I talked about "girls' and "love" I explained that until I was in my 30's that the only serious relationships I had were with women in our high school and as it says in the chorus, "On the road to finding out could not see then what I see now. All I needed to be found back in my hometown."
Finally when I talked about "football" and "family" I explained how I'd gone back to the field where we played and remembered those now long ago days. And how were were a band of brothers. Running out on the field as kids. A band of brothers. Come together become this: A Band of Brothers.
On my website, markpearsonmusic.com, you can find an accompanying blogpost, The Castaways, diving deeper into a song about being back on the stage of the high school auditorium singing once more with the three classmates I sang with 60 years earlier.
In that Blogpost you can also listen to a studio recording of the song "Faith, Hope, Love, Family."
The album, Class of 65, is available for streaming.
You can also see the complete CLASS OF 65 concert on my YouTube Channel
