The magic number for the Clinton High School Class of 1949 is 75. They were the 75th class to graduate from CHS. There were 75 students who started out in the class of 1949.
And on Saturday, Oct. 5, they met for lunch at Dietz Family Buffet to celebrate their 75th class reunion.
Classmates from 1949 have reunited for the past 15 years on the first Saturday of October. Last Saturday, they were down to four, three local -- Geraldine Burton Anstine of Blairstown, Doris Ann Feasel Hunter of Shawnee Mound and Naomi Farris Coleman of Clinton -- plus Bill Clark, who drives over from his home in Columbia, Mo.
Bill recalled delivering the Clinton newspaper as a boy in 1944, for which he was paid one silver dollar a week. He saved the dollar, he said, and bought a bicycle. He delivered four routes of the newspaper, by bicycle in the summer and walking in the winter, he said. He served in Korea after graduation, and when he returned, was hired as a reporter for the Clinton Eye. His first big assignment was in 1954, covering the trial of the seven men who led a riot at the state penitentiary in Jefferson City. The men were convicted of murder of an inmate who was killed during the riot, he said.
One of the seven was a student who started with the CHS Class of ‘49, but dropped out his sophomore year.
Bill went on to spend 36 years as a recruiter for Major League Baseball, 18 years for the Cincinnati Reds, and 12 for the Atlanta Braves. He has eight World Series rings, he said, that have his name on them, “just like I played.”
Bill is still a journalist who has written more than 6,000 columns, and now has his own website (patreon.com>yeoldclark). He has eaten in a restaurant in every county of Missouri, he said, and posts a list, adding that Dietz Family Buffet is in his top 25. In one column, he described “My Worst First Three Jobs,” all of which were working at the Bush Hatchery, starting when he was 12.
Naomi Farris Coleman of Clinton also had a career in journalism, working for the Kansas City Star and then for the Clinton Daily Democrat as a proofreader for Dan and Kay Miles.
Doris Ann Feasel Hunter was a school teacher who started out teaching in a one-room schoolhouse in Curtis, Mo., and also taught in Clinton schools.
Geraldine Burton Anstine of Blairstown was a dairy farmer’s wife who raised five sons, and at last count has 21 grandchildren, 42 great-grandchildren and 6 great-great grandchildren.
Six other Class of 1949 alumni survive: Jewell Wallace McFerrin, Joann Harvey Smith, Orville Roberts, Norman Williams Looker, Joann Parsons Brown and Mary Jane Vansant Sinclair.
