Every year over Memorial Day weekend, graduates of Wilson High School gather at the town’s parish hall to celebrate the past and catch up with friends, many of whom they probably haven’t seen since the last reunion 12 months earlier.

Individual classes have their parties, but the parish dinner brings everyone together as a community, if only for one night.

So what’s the deal with Ellsworth?

In the past two decades, alumni gatherings have gone from a dinner at the American Legion building to tail- gating on the grounds of the Ellsworth Recreation Center to nothing.

Being a graduate of a high school far, far from here, we have yet to miss a reunion. We even offer to help as much as possible from 800 miles away. It’s important to go home, especially for those of us who no longer have ties to the places that were so much a part of our lives. A reunion is actually one thing that gets better with age. People we barely spoke to in high school have become friends we look forward to seeing.

This is a long way of saying this year’s Ellsworth High School Homecoming has been expanded into a reunion of sorts.

The Smoky Hill Development Corporation and the Ellsworth Area Chamber of Commerce plan an alumni picnic at noon Saturday, Sept. 21, in Preisker Park.

The gathering will be the grand finale of a weekend that for the public will start at 3 p.m. Friday, Sept. 20, with a Homecoming parade. Class floats and former Homecoming queens and their courts are expected to participate.

The parade will be followed by school tours, including the new cafeteria and renovated gymnasium at Ellsworth Elementary School, and a tailgate, barbecue and live music at 5 p.m. at the high school. The Bearcats will take the football field that night against Salina’s Sacred Heart.

It sounds like a fun weekend, the kind that makes us think maybe high school wasn’t so bad after all.