Before we share another memory from Aiken Senior High’s Class of ’71, a few updates about our upcoming reunion on Nov. 6.

• If you’d like to help us stage the event, consider joining one of our subcommittees. Currently we are staffing up our Hospitality and Slide Show teams. Hospitality includes name tags, sign ins and other welcoming gestures, while the Slide Show will run a montage of images from our high school years in the background at our reunion. Other subcommittees will be staffed up soon.
• Regardless of whether you join the Slide Show team, if you have any photos or images to share that evoke our high school years, either related to Aiken itself or Cincinnati events, please send them along to Sue Stenten Gilman, ssuenegil@aol.com.
• Please take a couple minutes to check out the “Missing” classmates on our free website, aiken71.com. You just might have contact info for some of the ’71 Falcons we’ve had trouble locating.
• Need a place to stay the weekend of the reunion? The committee has arranged a reduced rate of $97 per night at Hyatt Place on Chester Road in Sharonville, just a 10-minute drive from our venue, the Centennial Barn. Our block of rooms will be held until Oct. 21.
• Remember, tickets can be purchased on the reunion website, where you can pay by check (using mailing instructions provided at checkout) or by credit card. Check is preferred, since it saves us a processing fee. Cost is $60 per person, and includes old friends, live music, catered dinner and cash bar. If you have any trouble ordering, give website administrator Keith Brown a call for friendly assistance! 513-602-5544.
• Tickets that were already purchased for either of the earlier dates we attempted will be honored at our Nov. 6 party.

Now, time to dig through five decades of cobwebs, as best we can …

Have you noticed that NBC dusted off an old TV franchise with the June launch of Capital One College Bowl, hosted by NFL great Payton Manning and his less famous brother Cooper? That reboot is reminiscent of a similar long-running show in Cincinnati that intersected with our high school years, It’s Academic.

First launched in Washington, D.C. in 1961, the scholastic competition holds The Guinness Book of World Records mark for the longest running TV quiz show. The series still airs in D.C. and a few other markets, with the 2020-2021 season marking its 60^th on the air. Not sure when it first came to Cincinnati, but it was still running in the Queen City as recently as 2008.

At the corner of Belmont Ave. and Memory Lane, I remember when our senior year team represented us, although lots of details are fuzzy after 50 years. We know for certain from our Senior-year edition of The Peregrine that our complete team, including alternates, consisted of Saul Aguiar, Karen Coombs, Bob Oikawa, Richard Orth, Mike Schuler and Matt Schwan and their coach was the great Mr. Harry Wynn. Sadly, three of those teammates are no longer with us as we lost Matt earlier this year, Mike last year and Karen in 2015.

I’ve talked to my boyhood neighbor Richard, who now lives in Richmond, Ky., and to Saul, who resides in Phoenix. Saul ended up being one of the alternates and wasn’t at the taping. I was in the audience that day, but neither Richard nor I can put together whether we had three or four on camera. For sure, Richard and Karen did appear on the broadcast and it feels like Bob would have been a lock for that, too. Saul recalls that Matt and Bob printed up It’s Academic team t-shirts, as represented in this Peregrine photo, that shows our squad posing with motorcycles.

A couple of the people who attended the taping think Aiken won, but since even team members aren’t sure, don’t take that to the bank. Likewise, Richard, Saul and I can’t piece together the other two schools that competed, but I have an unshakable memory of the taping that lingers.

Inspired by the subversive humor of the era, which permeated from the Merry Pranksters to The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, minutes before the taping was set to start, one of our classmates—another detail lost to time—came up with the idea that when our school was introduced, we would remain quiet, as if no one from Aiken, other than our team, had shown up.

Sure enough, when whatever private school that took part was announced, big cheers, followed by an equally avid greeting for whichever Kentucky store competed that day. The studio, however, fell stone quiet when the announcer exclaimed “Aiken Senior High!” Our team seemed mildly surprised, but the stage manager is the fellow who was really taken aback. He immediately looked at the audience with wide-eyed surprise and then shook his head with a touch of disdain.

During a commercial break, he implored the audience to “really let us hear from you” when the schools were next announced. When the schools were identified again, audience members from the other two schools apparently felt sorry for our crew and started to clap—just not as wholeheartedly as they did for their own classmates.

That’s when we decided we might as well the plug on our prank and give the stage crew the cheers they wanted. But, man, the look on that stage manager’s face when we first pulled it off was absolutely priceless.

Lots of priceless memories will be recalled when we gather for our 50^th Anniversary Reunion on Saturday, Nov. 6, at Centennial Barn in suburban Cincinnati. We sure hope to see you there.

- Geoff Mayfield