Dear fellow classmates,
We’re writing to introduce ourselves as your new Class Agents and your tour guides for our 50-YEAR LUTHER REUNION!
Most of us attended or at least had an opportunity to attend our 50th high school reunions. So, we’ve already come to terms with 50 sounding like a pretty big number. The 50 years since we graduated high school have come and gone, and now we’re ready to pull out all the stops for LUTHER 50.
We are just at the beginning of the planning stages for Luther 50. Here’s what we know for sure:
- The Reunion is October 7-9, 2022.
- There will be a football game.
- As the bigwig reunion class, our dinner will be in Peace Dining Room in Dahl Centennial Union. Food will be served.
The rest is up to us to plan, and we invite you to join us in doing that. The first order of business is putting together a reunion committee; if you’re interested in being on the committee, let us know.
Also, we’re planning to send a survey early in the new year to get your input in shaping the weekend—what groups, activities, and events would you like to have on the schedule?
Many classes produce a reunion book with each member of the class invited to write a few paragraphs on their lives since graduation. We think that would be good for us to do as well. Let’s share information on what we’ve been doing for the last 50 years. Later in 2022, we’ll give you guidelines on how much to write and the best format for sharing your writing with us. In the meantime, here are snippets of what we’ve been up to the last 50 years:
Dee Runnels
- I attended the University of Iowa College of Law from 1977 to 1980 and passed the bar exam in both Iowa and Illinois. My first year out of law school, I clerked for the judges in the Scott County District Court. I’ve been in private practice in the Quad Cities since 1981, and am now semi-retired and Of Counsel at Pastrnak Law Firm, P.C. in Davenport. I live with my thirteen-year-old pug, Frank Custis Runnels (Frankie), in Moline. I’ve served on boards of a number of not-for-profit organizations, such as the Girl Scouts (which is a laugh, because I was a mediocre to poor Girl Scout.) I’ve been on the Moline Public Library Board for a number of years, and am currently the Vice President. My main occupation outside of work is reading. I’ve been participating in the Luther Alumni and Friends Book Club, and it is fabulous.
Mike Hovland
- At the end of last June, I retired as Director of Enrollment Management Data Analytics at the University of Iowa. After earning an MA degree from Northern Arizona University in 1973, I returned to Luther as an admissions officer for five years. Aside from a seven-year detour getting my PhD in English, I worked for five employers over 48 years in the field of enrollment management. Since 1980 I have lived in Iowa City with my wife, Nancy Jones (Luther Class of 1969), and our poodle/Irish Setter mix Lucy. I still play tuba in various groups and sing in our church choir. We named our two sons Sven and Bjorn to narrow their college choices to places where people would likely be able to pronounce their names.
We’d like to share this kind of information through our Class Agent correspondence. It’s the first thing we check when we get the Luther Magazine and our Class Agent Letters. Let’s amp it up for Luther 50. There’s around 50 of us who check in on the Class of 1972 Facebook page, and Gail Hefner wins the award for most active and interesting posts. She’s like our class scribe. But we don’t have to do Facebook. We could set up a blog. Or we can just do email letters, with us as the distributors. If we don’t have your email address, please send it. If you prefer paper and snail mail, let us know.
Here’s our contact information:
