How many from your school year are still alive?

My class of 99 people had 3 dead within 3 months of graduation. Two in car accidents and one drowning. Since then at least 5 have died (we are now 53 to 54). All have been male. But other classes haven't had that many.

I think a few have died. I don’t keep up with any of them.

One guy, a football jock, died just last year from a rare cancer. His family couldn’t be with him because of COVID-19. A girl, who married a guy from high school who I was positive was gay (and he later did come out), also died from cancer. They were both around 53.

I’ve known people from elementary school that have died - both suicides. He was 40. She was around 38. Very sad to hear.

We lost of a fairly steady stream of them, including a couple this past spring—I wondered if they were early covid victims, but the obits weren't specific. We're up to 18 now out of a class of several hundred, which I guess isn't too bad as we're in our mid 50s.

There were about 250 in my graduating class. While 3 people died within a year of graduating, there have only been a few more deaths after that. Overall, I think 5 or 6 people have died.

I’m 50, only 40 people in my graduating class, and 2 have died. One from drug overdose, another from Parkinson’s. There are a couple of people who I can’t believe are still alive. I still communicate with only 2 or 3 people from my class.

I couldn't possibly say how many have died as I really didn't keep up with them after a few years, but I do know that the first guy I ever slept with (senior year) was killed in a drunk driving accident three years after we graduated.

All but one- and that includes me.

It's complicated.

Honey, OP, which school year? Prep? College? Grad School? 2nd Grad School?

52, Suburb of Massachusetts here. They started a FB page in my hometown of local deaths so I see it updated when someone dies. More than half were addiction/overdoses and a few were cancer, about 12.

And so it begins, one goddamn thing after another!

I only know of three, but there must be more. One died in her early twenties from fast-spreading cancer. Another, a cousin of mine, about two years ago. Again, cancer. The third was a really close friend whom I had hung out with until we hit high school, and then we drifted apart. When she was about 25, she started experiencing kidney problems, and found that her kidneys had not matured and were still child-size. She had a transplant, and later told me that she would die before she ever underwent another transplant. She married, had two daughters, and when she was about 38 everything went to hell in a handbasket, very quickly, and she died quite suddenly..

There were 102 of us. We've lost two to suicide, one to an accident, and a couple of others to cancer. We turn 59 this year so I expect the pace will start to accelerate over the next decade.

American schools are so weird. Do you have different people at different classes? And a different room for each class?

Yes, R15. Don’t you?

I graduated from high school in 2003 and attended a small high school. There were 54 people in my class. Two people have died. One of them was a close friend. She died of ALS at 29. The other was guy who died last year due to brain cancer.

R15 British schools are similar. Once students go to secondary school they have individual classes that last between 45 to 55 minutes, normally different classmates in different classes.

I'll let ya know once I someday graduate..!

I graduated in 1939 and as far as I know, everyone is still alive

My high school bully died. He was a jock on the football team and hung out with the popular guys. I wasn't really popular but hung out with a couple of guys who were The bully (Tommy) would come up to me in front of my friends and push me up against the lockers. "You look like a fag. I bet you're a fag." My friends would pretend they didn't see anything. I think he saw something in me that he hated about himself because one night, in a gay bar in NYC, I saw Tommy walk in with one of his hot friends from high school. He still had the alpha personality and hot build and his jock friend said: "Tommy likes to try different types of things." Uh, yeah! So Tommy took me aside and actually apologized. He meant it too. They played a slow song and he asked me to dance with him. I think he fancied me, which explained a lot. After that, in our small town outside the city, he would always wave and smile but we never spoke again. Eventually I heard he died of AIDS. Ironically, I moved back home to look after my dad and one of his friends asked if I wanted to be set up with a younger gay guy he knew. "But he's in the closet so you have to be real discreet." It turned out to be Tommy's brother! I told him thanks but no thanks.

Class of 1978 here. About 10% of our class had died. Many recently from cancer, heart problems and other medical issues. I guess it's not bad after 43 years.

I'm in my 40s and know of at least 10 from my class who have died. Cancer, car accidents, and drug overdoses were the causes that I'm aware of.

So sad. Now it’s just me and Norman Lloyd.

I had four chief bullies. Two are dead. One broke his neck in a diving accident senior year and spent 15 years in a wheelchair before he died (don’t know how) and another one killed himself around age 30. Neither were gay. My the other two bullies who called me fag all the time ended up being gay themselves. Self hating cunts. I would not forgive them because they all wrecked my self esteem for a lifetime.

The only two I know of that have died from my class is Eddie Money and a guy that died of an overdose 6 months after graduation, but I haven't kept up with anyone from my class so I don't know if anyone else has died which I am sure they have.

The only one who mattered to me died of AIDS in the '80s. We had sex after picking each other up at the Club Baths in NY, not having seen each other in almost a decade. Best sex of my life. The next time I saw him was at the second display of the Names Project. He was a quilt panel.

R16 No. Same classmates for all 3/4 years of high school.

I have no idea. I only stay in contact with one person from my class. He moved to Ireland years ago and has as much interest in school classmates as I have.

Here’s a creepy thing — every once in a while I’ll think of some random from grammar school or high school & think “I wonder what happened to....” and I look them up & they’re always dead. Suicide, heart disease, car accident. One guy’s dad was a dr who died of a heart attack at age 46. His stepbrother died of a heart attack at 38 and he died of a heart attack at 42. You’d think they would start seeing a cardiologist when they’re 16, you know? With a history like that.

It’s just strange that every person I haven’t thought of for years and I suddenly think of is dead.

Sorry, half brother, not stepbrother

One died because he took some bad Molly, one had an aneurysm, and one died of typhoid fever (!!). Graduated 20 years ago.

R30, That happened to me too, this past year. I looked up two people I hadn't thought of in quite awhile and found they died a year prior within months of each other.

R30 And how do you know they weren't seeing a cardiologist?

I only know of one death, and it was pretty spectacular: he was a bush pilot who got hammered and deliberately crashed his plane into the side of a mountain outside Vancouver. He was an evil, selfish douchebag in high school, and the evil apparently never left him -- he also killed his co-pilot, a young guy with a wife and two kids.

Who even knows? I friended a few on Facebook maybe ten years ago, but I've deleted my Facebook account since and haven't kept in touch with them. I know at least one who died in a car accident at 28. He was a huge dick in high school actually, but you know how it is when someone dies. His memorial page was filled with all these glowing posts about him. I'm 41, so I'm sure there's more.

R21...with friends like yours, who needs enemies?

Funny how the biggest fag-bashers turned out to be gay.

[quote]it hit pretty hard. I wasn't particularly close to the guy but we are only in our 20's and it feels like the first step to losing people who I shared an important part of my life with.

High school? FFS, who cares?

I assume you are in your early 20s, when you think that as you go through life you will keep all your old friends and continually add new ones, an every growing mob of friends?

By your late 20s or early 30s you will begin to see that it doesn't work that way. Instead you focus on fewer and fewer people and learn to distinguish aquaintances with whom you are casually friendly from real friends, and even with them you will see that it takes some mutual effort and a willingness to revise your view of friendships to keeps things kindled.

See how hard hit you are at 35 when someone you hardly knew from before you were in college dies: suicide, drugs, accident, illness, whatever cause. The reaction will likely be very different.

There were 365 in my graduating class, I didn't even know if all of them were alive on graduation day. It is now 51 years later still don't know, still don't care.

All 4 of my Primary (Elementary) school friends were dead by the time I was 30, 2 from drugs,1 in a bike accident and 1 murdered. It freaked me out a bit.

We had lots of them die in their 40s and 50s, and even a few in our 20s and 30s. One girl died of leukemia within weeks of graduation. Now we're in our 60s, it's mostly classmates' parents who turn up in the obits.

It's been 50 years, and I know several of them are dead. I don't keep up with 99% of them so I really don't know exactly how many are still alive.

OP, think about your audience. You may be in your 20s, but most Dataloungers are older than Prince Philip.

I don't keep up with them. There's a website for my class ('82), but I haven't joined, mostly because, of the ones I've encountered across the years, most are deplorable in one way or another.

Across the decades, I've heard of perhaps a dozen deaths of those in my class. The weirdest one, for me, was the first, back in 1983: one of a pair of twins, whom I ran into inside a local Motts Five&Dime, who took off in his car and died perhaps seven minutes later on the freeway, having struck a pillar. Apparently I was the last to see him alive. Still another, a sometime friend/foe during our school years, had an aneurysm (2003? 2004?) after drinking several doses of Five Hour Energy, and bled out his nose and died. Cancer took one; heart attack another. There's probably been a lot more that I haven't heard about.

I graduated in a small town in 1989. There were 32 of us. As far as I know, we’re all still alive. I heard one guy just about died from covid complications last month, but he’s doing okay now.

There was a website I found several years ago that kept updates on a graduating class from the 70s I think. It was fascinating to see graduation pictures and reading to find out who had died and from what.

Two guys from my class. One was the first dude who ever blew me and he died in a crash alone on Angeles Crest. Not the brightest guy and huge annoying family of religious nuts who were totally insufferable right-wingers, especially his Karen of a mom (who died of cancer within a month of diagnosis). Another was a nice guy, popular and became a science teacher. Got chubby, moved to Arizona and got married. Disappeared for 3 days and they found him in his car on the side of the road, stone cold. Family never did an autopsy so the cause is not known. A few others from adjacent classes died of suicide and an alleged aneurysm (may have been an OD though).

95%, from 1967.