LYNDORA — Most of the males who were seniors in high school in 1945 had a job waiting for them after graduation — military service.

World War II was the backdrop of the lives of members of the Butler High School Class of 1945.

Some members of the class gathered Saturday at the Tanglewood Center to celebrate their 70th high school reunion and reflected on what it was like to attend school during World War II.

“It was a sad time,” graduate Margaret Emerick of Butler said about the war. “And we thought it would be one of the last wars.”

About 70 members of the class made the reunion, said Dorothy Kriley of Connoquenessing Township, a graduate and organizer of the event.

Kriley remembers she would spend the money she made working during high school on war bonds.

“After the war ended, I cashed them in and used that money to go to college,” she said.

Most of the boys who graduated where drafted when they turned 18.

“A month after graduating, I was in the army,” said Donald Stewart of Butler. “A lot of people didn’t graduate and went into service.”

Tony Maletta of Greensburg said he also was drafted out of school. He said the war was a difficult thing to live through for the students.

“There was always news that someone’s relative had been killed,” Maletta said.

Maletta said he wanted to go to the Air Force when he was in high school.

“I wanted to be a red hot fighter pilot,” he said. “That’s what everyone wanted to do.”

But Maletta failed a physical when a doctor detected a heart murmur.

After graduating, he was drafted and again visited the same doctor.

“I went to the same doctor, only this time he said ‘You’re OK,’” Maletta said. “So I went to the infantry.”

Maletta said all the boys in his class expected to be drafted after graduation.

“It’s all we had to look forward to in high school,” he said.

Ed Kinter said he was drafted while he was still in school.

“Uncle Sam sent me a little notice telling me he had a job for me,” Kinter said.

Kinter said he became a Merchant Marine. But his relationship with his high school girlfriend, Mary Groves Ward, soon ended.

“I was a drinking, smoking sailor,” he said. “She married a good Christian man, and they were married for 63 years.”

Kinter, too, changed his ways after meeting his late wife, Jennie Stewart.

“She told me she would marry me if I went to church with her on Sundays,” he said. “So I became a good Christian man, too.”

But Kinter said he and his former high school sweetheart rekindled their love after both their spouses passed away.

“This July, we’ll be married two years,” he said.

Helen Gillis Christy of Butler and Betty Lou Loucks Breese, now of Virgina, have been friends since grade school in Meridian.

Christy said basketball was a big part of her life in high school.

“They didn’t do as much with girls sports at the time,” she said. “But we were champions.”

Breese said she had a passion for ballet.

Her love of dancing is where she met her future husband, Larry Breese, who graduated with her.

“We met in dancing school when we were 8,” she said.

Helen Hilliard Schubert of West Sunbury said times were different in 1945.

“Coming out of the Great Depression, a lot of people were poor,” she said. “But everyone was very respectful back then.”