Here are some things from old Dowagiac papers.

1933: Before an audience of 1,200 people, the senior class of 1933 had their commencement.

There were 83 graduates.

Attorney Carl D. Mosier, president of the Board of Education, gave out the diplomas.

Josephine Downey and Walter Hanson were two of the 1933 grads who were in an article called Who’s Who.

Josephine, who had a beautiful singing voice, was to go to Battle Creek to enter training to be a nurse.

Walter Hanson, born in 1913, made his home with Dr. and Mrs. Herkimer during his high school career. Walter is an outstanding artist. One of his best pieces ia large bust of Dr. Herkimer. (Doc was my doctor when I was born in 1930.)

Walter was planning to do a life-sized piece of sculpturing of Dr. Herkimer in the near future.

(I wonder what ever happened to the doctor’s piece?)

Class of 1933, class day by the seniors on Friday. The program: class history, Jean Gwilt; class poem, Allegra Reed; class song, Wilma Bakeman; class prophecy, Dick Scofield.

After the program, the senior class went to Cable Lake for a supper and swimming.

Later, they returned to the school gym for a dance with “Polly and Her Pals” as entertainment.

1933: (Have a baby son) Mr. and Mrs. Orrin Merwin are the happy parents of an eight-pound son, born Sunday. He has been named David Herman.

(Dave was one of my old swimming buddies out at Dead Man’s Hollow years ago).

Me being an old statistician, I’ve always liked to play with numbers.

Recently, I noticed there were listed in my South Bend Tribune an enormous amount of deaths in the obituary section, more than normal.

I counted 49 deaths and their ages.

I added the ages of the 49 and came up with a total of 3,600 years.

This divided by 49 shows the average age at 73.5 years of age.

Eight were in their 90s, 17 in their 80s, nine in their 70s, six in their 60s, four in their 50s, only one in their 40s, three in their 30s and only one in his 20s.

It was interesting there were twice as many in their 80s than those in their 90s.

I was reading a letter to the editor. It started out, I’m an octogenarian. I said Holy Cow, that’s what I am. I told my wife and she said come next August she would be one also. Boy, those years sure fly by, don’t they?

“Cardinal Charlie” Gill writes a nostalgic weekly column about growing up in the Grand Old City. E-mail him at cardinalcharlie@hotmail.com.