After Yearbook meetings, when Nathan Handelsman went to meet up with friends at the Chuck E. Cheese’s next to Kmart, he shot them a page before hopping on his bike. As a member of the El Valedor staff, Handelsman was fond of photography, and on the last day of school, he rescued a handful of yearbook photos from the trash and saved them in a box. 20 years later on June 28, 2014, Handelsman dusted off that box, grabbed his old yearbook and brought both to the MVHS Class of 1994 Reunion at Blackberry Farm.

The photos, preserved in plastic white sleeves, rest on two brown picnic benches. Among them lay dated dance invitations and a giant panorama of Kennedy — then Junior High — Middle School’s Class of 1990, where the majority of the alumni came from. A group of women sat by the picture listing off names and commenting, “I can name at least half of these people.” On the other side of the bench, a father and his two young children struggled to identify his wife.

“That one!” his daughter said, pointing to a girl in the middle.

“No, that looks nothing like her,” the father said. “Mommy is blonde.”

Meanwhile, Kathleen Hansen and Debbie Fellows looked over other memorabilia and reminisced about slumber parties and birthdays, feathered bangs and Converse High Tops.

“Think about ‘Saved by the Bell,’” Hansen said, laughing. “That’s what we wore in 8th grade.”

Hansen’s participation in band played a significant role in her high school experience and eventually led her to pursue career as a musician. However, she and Fellows expressed  mutual regret about their cautious attitudes in high school:

Spreading the word 

The reunion began at with the 10:30 a.m. tour of MVHS to see the newly remodeled cafeteria. After the tour, the alumni headed to Blackberry Farm to reconnect over lunch. Organizer Randy Ksar did not go on the tour himself and has not seen the cafeteria and field. However, as Ksar still lives in the Bay Area, he passes by the school on his daily commute and has seen the buildings from the side. As the 20-year mark approached, Ksar and his classmates began planning a reunion and Ksar took on the role of organizer. The biggest challenge he faced was tracking down classmates.

“We used Facebook quite a bit,” Ksar said. “For people outside of Facebook, it was a little harder.” Ksar explained that since there was no database of recent contact information, he had to rely on email and social media and could only hope to reach all his classmates.

While planning the event on Facebook, Rachna Nivas came into contact with old friends. Nivas, a professional dancer living in San Francisco, appreciated the art program during her time at MVHS and described choir as enriching and her overall school experience as picture-perfect.

“I heard that it’s all competitive now, and it wasn’t like that at all,” Nivas said, adding that after high school comes responsibility and that students should take things less seriously. “You will never remember that you got an A on that paper, but you’re going to remember doing something really dumb with your friends. And that’s what makes life — those are the things that create the landscape of your life.”

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Most alumni came to the event with their spouses and children, who enjoyed the large ’94 piñatas. Although some spouses were not Californians, Kim Hickson and her husband both attended MVHS. The couple graduated two years apart, but did not meet until after college.

“He remembered me, but I didn’t remember him,” Hickson said. “He was always in the computer lab, so I’m sure he helped me print at one point.”

The alumni unanimously agreed that the popular place to eat was the rally court, or “the quad,” but Hickson and her friends always sat at “the wall” across from the gym. Hickson had two groups of friends — school friends and concert friends. She went to concerts at least once a month, and during high school, she witnessed the shift from metal to grunge.

“We saw Stone Temple Pilots open for Butthole Surfers, Nirvana open for Dinosaur Junior, Social Distortion open for The Ramones,” Hickson said.

Though both Hickson and Nivas attended the reunion in kelly green maxi dresses, their styles were vastly different in high school — Hickson’s wardrobe revolved around music. While other students, like Nivas, dressed in birkenstocks and denim shorts, Hickson’s uniform consisted of black concert t-shirts and flannel shirts from The Gap. According to Hickson, the trend of concert t-shirts, including some with bad words, was so popular that they banned the t-shirts from Kennedy Middle School.

Common backgrounds

Attending the same middle school or even elementary school and having a small class size — approximately half of current class sizes — fostered close relationships among the students.

Hickson explained that MVHS did not have the type of cliques you would find in Mean Girls — everyone knew each other. The only exclusive groups that formed were made up of students who did not speak English and preferred to talk in their native language.

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Before the reunion, the alumni came together to create four memory books that honored students who had passed away and placed them among the memorabilia.

“[Navy SEAL Matthew Axelson’s] memorial was 8 years to the day when he was killed in action,” Hickson said. “I knew him, because I went to junior high and high school with him. Quiet, respectful guy, which probably describes most of the SEALs.”

By the memorabilia, the alumni and their families picked up Handelsman’s photographs in their plastic white sleeves, and scanned for familiar faces.

 “Feel free to take home any pictures you’re in so you can share them with your family,” Handelsman said as his former classmates headed home. Handelsman had come to the reunion with a box full of memories, and like the rest of his classmates, left with new ones.