EIGHTH GRADE CLASS GATHERS FOR REUNION

JACKSON -- The last time Betty Kuss and her eighth grade classmates saw each other in one place, it was the spring of 1950.

On Monday afternoon, the group of Leopold classmates was at least partially reunited in Woodard's Cafe in Jackson.

Five members of the 1950 eighth grade class at St. John's Grade School at Leopold caught up on half a century of lost history over dinner and coffee.

Four of the 61-year-old classmates, including Kuss, Carol Ann (Clippard) Beussink, Helen (Thiele) Beussink, and David Elfrink, now live and work in the Cape Girardeau area. Maureen Elfrink, who works as a Catholic missionary, now lives in Santaren, Para, Brazil.

Kuss, who organized the meeting, scheduled the reunion around Maureen's trip home from Brazil. Maureen will return to Brazil in early January.

The four class members who could not attend because of prior engagements are Matthew Peters, Ennis Elfrink, Leonard Spooler and Corrine (Holzum) Tinholder.

The classmates recalled that the first school building, which was torn down in 1947, was a one-room school house built near the site of the present Leopold Elementary School. Every member of the class said they walked to school. Carol Ann maintained that she, of all the classmates, had the farthest walk.

The large one-room school house, they said, was heated by a wood stove and housed children of all grades. The group said they sat on wooden benches and listened to one teacher, who taught all the children in the room.

All the classmates came to the reunion equipped with photographs and yearbooks, as well as historical tidbits about the year they graduated. Kuss reported that the price of a loaf of bread in 1950 was only 14 cents. A stamp, she said, was only three cents.

Carol Ann, who brought her elementary autograph book to the reunion, giggled at an ancient message from Maureen: "Dear Carol Ann," the scrawled message read, "When you get old and ugly, and you don't know what to do, Just think of your old schoolmate, who's old and ugly too."

The group chatted and laughed for hours about their grade school days and their accomplishments since. Kuss said she plans to reunite the group again in the year 2000.