The 105th annual Syracuse High School alumni banquet Saturday night brought proud out graduates representing classes all the way back to 1937.

Syracuse High School Alumni Association held the banquet in the Syracuse Community Center. Along with dinner catered by Sleepy Owl restaurant, event co-organizers Kay McCulloch, Diana Castell and Charmaine Doyle, and master of ceremonies Steve Carlson orchestrated a recognition of three classes in particular, a rendition of the yellow jacket’s school song an after-dinner program.

The three classes to receive special recognition this year were the classes of 1944, 1954 and 1964. While the classes of 1944 and 1954 were represented by just a few graduates, more than two dozen stood up for 1964.

The oldest living graduate of Syracuse High School to attend the reunion was Meredith Green, who graduated with the class of 1937. Green joked, “I just wish I knew where everybody else from my class is!”

At the end of dinner, Carlson took a look at how things have changed since most of the guests in the room were in high school. The year that the class of 1944 graduated, he reminded the group, the Normandy invasion of France took place in June; a loaf of bread cost $.10 and the minimum wage was $.30 an hour.

When the class of 1954 left the school, the U.S. Supreme Court was deciding the famous case of Brown vs. Board of Education; McDonald’s and Burger King both opened their first restaurants; Elvis Presley’s music created a new genre of music called Rock ‘N Roll; and the average cost of a new car was $1,700. By 1964, The Beatles were appearing on the Ed Sullivan show; The Munsters and Gilligan’s Island were on TV; and a gallon of gas was $.30.

Presenting the evening’s entertainment was Marty (Whitehead) Scearce, who reviewed radio and television culture by presenting it in the form of a radio program.

“Some of you, I realize, may be a little too young for this,” she joked. “But you have to remember, I was an only child growing up on a farm, with a dog and a pony and a horse for companionship. All of my friends were on the radio,” she told the crowd.

But they had listed to the radio and the TV also, and could fill in the blanks where Scearce left them. She taxed her fellow yellow jackets’ memories by talking about early radio soap operas, including “Mary Noble, Backstage Wife,” Hilltop House,” which was set in an orphanage — “That one was a tear-jerker” — and children’s shows such as Buck Rogers and Sky King.

“And then, who remembers ‘Gang Busters?’ she asked. “Kids everywhere were hoping the would get to catch the bad guys  — and their mothers were hoping just as hard that wouldn’t.”

“But those were the kind of shows we grew up on, weren’t they?” she asked. “They taught moral lessons… to stand up for yourself and for others, and to stand up for what you believe in. The jokes were clean, and so was the language.”

Many lingered after the program to reminisce just a little more. The class of 1964, it was announced, will be in charge of planning next year’s alumni banquet.