LYNDORA — It was the last hurrah last weekend of the Butler High School Class of 1946.

The 60-some members who gathered at the Tanglewood Center, 10 Austin Ave., were attending their 70th and final class reunion.

Poor health among the committee responsible for planning the get-togethers since the first reunion in 1956 has prompted the Class of 1946 to call it quits after this year's event.

“I started on the committee in 1961. I worked behind the scenes,” said Verna Vargo of Butler, adding she came aboard the reunion committee formally in 1966.

According to Vargo, the first class reunion was the 10th in 1956. Then the class gathered every five years until the 50th reunion. Since then the reunions have been annual affairs for the past 20 years.

“We had 200 attend the 50th,” said Vargo of the reunion at the Butler County Country Club.

Since then, the last 20 reunions have been at Tanglewood, she said.

But she said many on the committee are too sick to do the work that goes into planning a reunion.

“With the committee's health, it's just too much to go on,” Vargo said.

Fellow reunion committee member Jackie Rogers said, “The 70th is a good stopping place. The class of 1945 stopped at 70.”

Vargo said, “It's been a nice committee and a nice group of people. It's going to be a sad day, but for the committee it's going to be a glad day.”

She said the reunion committee has dwindled from 13 members to six.

The class ranks have also been reduced. Vargo said 421 graduated on June 5, 1946, but 272 classmates are dead.

Rogers said, “At the 10th reunion, we had not lost one class member. We didn't lose anybody until after the 10th-year reunion.”

For the July 23 finale, people came from Texas, Florida and Washington state, said Vargo. “I wish more local people would come.”

Rogers said theirs was the first class to graduate after World War II, but many of the men still went into the military and some women went into the military too, primarily the nursing corps.

One of those enlistees was Loyal Moore, 88, of Seattle.

He graduated in January 1946, because back then the class split into January and June graduations.

“I immediately went into the service,” he said. Eventually the Army sent him to Guam where he found himself with two other Butler High Class of 1946 graduates: Paul Kiser who was a Marine and Frank Simon, who as in the Navy.

Moore noted it was odd to have three members from his class stationed together on an island in the Pacific Ocean.

“They were good years,” he said of his high school days. “Maybe I was too busy having fun to be as interested in academics as I should have been.”

After the war, Moore went to Allegheny College in Meadville under the GI Bill.

“I had to remind myself why I was there. It took some hard work,” Moore said.

He eventually transferred to the University of Pittsburgh and got his bachelor's degree in pharmacology.

He also met his wife, Marge, at Allegheny College. They were married for 65 years. She died in March.

After a career in the health industry, Moore said he retired in 1986.

“It worked out in many ways, I have no regrets,” he said.Moore added that as far as class reunions went, “I came in more recent years when my mother still lived here. I'd come to visit here and coordinate events.”Jack VanGorder, 87, said he joined the paratroopers right after graduation.“Paratroopers got $50 more a month. That's the reason I joined,” said VanGorder who was in the Army two years. “I was in Japan. We were part of the occupation forces.Then, he said, he returned to Butler.He was a foreman at Armco in the Melt Shop and the open hearth and retired in 1990 with 40 years of service.As for high school reunions, VanGorder said, “I've come to some but I haven't been for awhile.”“Jack Palmer was in our class. He always liked to come. He passed away 10 years ago.”“Legally, I'm blind. I can see to get around, but I can't recognize anyone,” VanGorder said.Edith Protzman Oesterling, 88, who now splits time between Florida and Butler, said she stayed in Butler after graduation.“I try to come to all of them that I can,” said Oesterling of the reunions. “If you haven't met people before, this is the place to go to meet them.” .Oesterling said she still keeps in touch with Sylvia Kerr Hinchberger, Alvin Rettig and Ken Fry, all 1946 classmates.And she remembers the class banquet in the Butler Independent Social Club on the second floor of the Willard Hotel on the day before the June 5 commencement.“I remember I made my dress out of curtain material,” she said.“I was going to be a secretary but I got married,” said OesterlingRose Muti Clark, who lives in Weirton, W.Va., with her husband Warren, said, “I didn't come last year. I do come when I can.”She said she hadn't kept in touch with classmates.

Clark said, “Not too much, most of them are deceased. All of my close girlfriends are deceased.”“I've been visiting with Jackie and Verna. Everybody looks different. I don't recognize then,” Clark said.“It's sort of sad. I wonder why they can't combine different years like they do in Weirton,” Clark said, noting all classes got together to make Weir High's 100th anniversary.Mary Burns Byers, 89 of Saxonburg graduated on Jan. 16, 1946, after spending two years at Butler High after coming from a Meadville parochial school.“I saw that it is the last reunion. The committee worked so hard and its been a good committee,” said Byers. “They were all pretty good.”“I had some fun just hanging out,” Byers said. “A lot of my friends are from the class.”But she's not ready to sit all day on the porch rocker,She and her second husband, Francis “Louie” Byers, 92, she said “still dance every Wednesday night. We go dancing at the Legion (hall) in Lyndora.”“I think our numbers are dwindling like leaves fallen off the tree,” said VanGorder adding the last reunion reminded him of a poem he memorized in the sixth grade, “The Last Leaf” by Oliver Wendell Homes.He said the last verse goes:“And if I should live to beThe last leaf upon the treeIn the spring,Let them smile, as I do now,At the old forsaken boughWhere I cling.”