Gladys Crane and Yvonne Ayers saw each other and stood still. They looked closely, as if searching for something.
Then, they shrieked with joy.
"Oh my God, you haven't changed a darn bit," Crane said to Ayers.
They hugged and then looked at each other again, keenly, quizzically, as if surprised at how quickly 41 years had passed.
"You voice hasn't changed at all," Ayers said to Crane.
It's the voice of an old friend, someone said.
The Sea to Sky Hotel boomed with such voices on Friday and Saturday (Sept. 4 and 5) as 45 friends from the 1968 Howe Sound Secondary graduating class reunited.
They came from Australia, Portugal and all across B.C. and the hotel lobby became a small time machine where the past flashed on the present in small, tender moments.
A million questions were asked and answered about careers, kids and family. Balding heads and growing waists were joked about. The women, some grandmas now, giggled like teenaged girls. Men became boys again.
Among them was Doug Hoodikoff, who arrived stealthily and flipped Bob Meredith's hat with a finger. Both men were meeting each other after 25 years.
"This reminds us that these are old friends here. See how quickly a handshake turns into a hug," he said.
"We wouldn't have done that in 1968," Carl Ingraham said, as both roared with laughter.
The event took root last May when three friends, Penny Bick, Myrna Dawson and Hoodikoff got together and talked about organizing a high school reunion.
When Hoodikoff called Kuhn with their plans, Kuhn offered to contact all his graduating mates. He opened his annual - full of unkept promises scribbled by friends to "Be in touch" - and started looking for people. It wasn't easy, especially with those who had changed their names after marriage.
He made more than 500 calls. He searched Facebook, MySpace, and Linkeden. He called friends. He called people he thought might turn out to be old friends.
Soon, he started finding people.
"There would be a pause, a big pause and they would say 'How did you found me?' Some of my friends said, 'You should have been a detective,'" he laughed.
Of the people he contacted, some had also stayed in touch with one or two other people from school, and that would spark a cycle of more phone calls. It took him almost a year, but 61 people in a class of 67 were contacted, making it worth the effort, Kuhn said.
"We went out from high school and then we got married and we had a family and we just forgot everybody we graduated with."
On the weekend, he had a chance to remember, to meet old friends and to be 18 in Squamish again.
