YOUR SPACE: Former classmates rekindle friendships

They were girls in the South Junior High Class of 1946.

Years went by. They went their own ways. After all, it wasn't like they were BFFs.

Not then, anyway, but now, 63 years later, they are Best Friends Forever.

Ties to the past bond these seven classmates, and they've taken it from there.

"We've gotten to re-know each other," Barbara (Bennett) Haehn says.

"We just talk. It's not about our junior high days. We know every detail about each other," Joanne (Brown) Clasen says.

The lunches began as a one-time thing about 10 years ago after a Colorado Springs High School (now Palmer) class reunion, then turned into a monthly affair. The table has since been set for seven.

Men are welcome at the lunch, but so far there have been no takers. So it's gals-only on the annual calendar Haehn makes for everyone with photos, birthdays and lunch dates.

"We look forward to it," Rosemary Pavlica says.

"We all have so much in common; we're just real comfortable with each other," Alice (Lehnus) Smith says. "I feel more at home now than when I was in junior high with them; I was so bashful then."

"I don't remember what I was like in junior high. Whatever," Ida (Mayse) Blankenbaker says.

Unlike teens today, in the 1940s "whatever" wasn't in the vocabulary of these World War II-era students.

"They kept German prisoners stationed at Fort Carson during the war, and they'd do work detail and they would drive up Nevada in the trucks," Clasen says. "We'd wave to them and they would yell at us, wave back. I can remember that so clearly."

With others to hang out with on Prospect Lake and cruise around with on Nevada Avenue, their social circles expanded after junior high.

"We all ran with different groups," Clasen says.

Their paths diverged more after high school. Jobs and husbands took them to other states and countries.

Those who stayed in the Springs didn't stay close.

"Most were newly married and were doing their thing. We were busy starting to have babies," Clasen says.

She and Claudia (Jones) Morgan were classmates at Helen Hunt Elementary School starting in the third grade.

"We didn't keep in touch, but we'd run into each other," Clasen says.

The lunches reunited them, and the others, as fast friends. They also meet at homes and travel together.

Choosing the lunch site is easy. One person says, "Where are we eating next?" Someone says, "How about Applebee's?" and it's a date.

They don't need a Facebook page to social network - just a menu.