Thomas White-Hassler

Thomas White-Hassler Sep 2016

We will always know that you know that we’re not just images stuck inside these frames.
We are your classmates,
Debate opponents,
Your team mates,
Dance partners,
Dream sharers,
Steadies,
Ex’s,
Captains and scrubs,
Actors and stage managers,
Cheerleaders and cheerleadees,
But most of all we and you were,
No,
Most of all we and you are part of that unique clan called Upper Moreland High School Class of ‘63,
And for those all too brief aquarian years we came together and created bonds and memories that
We will always know.

For my 50th high school reunion I was asked to write a poem to place with the photographs of our departed classmates. Sure. They ask the nerdy, bookish dweeb to write an inverse eulogy. This is the best I could do on short notice.

Thomas White-Hassler Sep 2016

For Wolfgang

I can no more describe Wolfgang in 140 characters than 140 million.
His mind and spirit were far too agile for that.
His mind would carve and caress ideas into new shapes the way his hands would form and caress pieces of wood into beauty they did not know they possessed.
He engaged each of us in different ways, changing the arc of our lives.
And thus through us his immortality is assured.
It is our duty to continue bending in new directions.
So bend we will, always under Wolfgang's now ethereal, impish gaze. It is the least we can do for one who gave so much.

I wrote this the morning of the funeral of my closest high school friend.

— The End —