The class of 1949 has been doing this a long time. 

Saturday evening at Winston and Beryl Churchill’s property marked their 75th class reunion — all eight in attendance agreed that they’re one of Powell’s best classes. 

Five more class members live out of town and could not attend. 

Back in 1949 there were 74 students featured in the class photo, member Donna Brasher said. A disclaimer in a 1949 issue of the Tribune stipulates that not all students may be included. Estimates from class members put the class total between 74 and 79. This year’s graduating class was just over 130 students. 

“I can’t think of anything our class was really exceptional at, but it’s a very good class … it’s still one of the best classes in Powell,” Thayer Cox said.

When it comes to sports, however, that may be up for debate.

“Sports wise we didn’t do very good in football … we might have been the worst class there ever was at it, I don’t know,” Churchill joked.

The class had their fun though. Cox remembered with a mischievous smile sneaking out onto Yellowstone Lake during what was then called Senior Sneak Day. 

In another story they changed the C (for Cody High School) on a hill near Rattlesnake Mountain to a P, fellow classmate Dolores Bleekman recalled. They took limestone up the hill and managed to pull off the mischievous act — she wondered if any class had done it since.

And of course there were group outings to things like dances as far as Bridger, Montana, said Mildred Emery and Brasher. 

On one occasion Brasher remembers catching the dress her mother had just sewn on a pipe. She fell down and looking back now she said she probably had a concussion.

“They probably should have taken me to the hospital,” Donna said with a laugh, “But we lived through that, we still went dancing again.”

Out of the class came three Ph.D’s, a few master’s degrees, teachers, engineers, nurses, a dentist and farmers, Bleekman said.

“We had wonderful, wonderful farmers. Winston [Churchill], of course, is still active. I guess he’s never, ever going to give up,” she said. 

One class of ‘49 alum, Felix Bessler, even flew a helicopter for Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.

Others graduated, married and had families like Emery.

“I didn’t think I had any more to learn in school,” she said with a smile, “I had a lot to learn [at] home.”

Whatever the class of 1949 went on to do individually they all started together in September of 1937. Many of them were raised “country kids,” said Ilene Kobbe, she thinks that drew the class together. At the time, there wasn’t much money and they had to find things to do such as attending picnics and sleepovers.

“It was a fun class, it was always a fun class,” she said. 

 All in all there were roughly 125 first grade students (kindergarten and preschool did not exist then).

Bleekman, a retired school teacher, could not imagine having over 50 kids learning to read, write and compute. Let alone how they all fit into one classroom — to add to the feat, at that time there was only one grade school for students in first through sixth grade and one high school with students in seventh through 12th grade.

The classes moved up through the grades as a unit, Bleekman remembered, and along the way they picked up some musical skills. Their music program was “outstanding,” she said. In first grade they began learning music, by second grade they had a vocal music teacher, in third grade they had a band that played tonettes (an in instrument similar to a recorder), by fifth grade they “had a bonafide fifth grade band.” 

Since graduation they’ve met most years as an individual class — not all have made it each year but Loretta Kolb said one has been held every year. 

“Everybody just treated each other like brothers and sisters, we were the best of friends, and throughout all the years they kept contact and just supported one another emotionally in kindness … they cared about one another a lot,” Kolb said.