From Rock Around the Clock to TikTok

A collection of stories from a few high school classmates (Memphis Central High class of 1959) that follows the trajectories of their lives through 80-plus years from the 1940s to today.

Each personal story adds to the long view of a tumultuous and triumphant span of history that saw a world war, the civil rights movement, the birth of rock and roll in their hometown, racial integration, women's rights, space exploration, the Vietnam War, economic booms and busts, and technological advances into a new century that connected the world virtually in ways their parents and grandparents could hardly have imagined. Their stories are both ordinary and extraordinary, and leave the reader with a sense of how the twists and turns, and dreams and realities that everyone experiences can add up to rich lives, with plenty of promise for their futures, their families, and the world.

A few months after reconnecting at their sixtieth reunion, and at the beginning of the lockdowns of the Covid-19 pandemic, fourteen high school classmates began to get together on Zoom every two weeks. They talked about their families and careers, the many places they had lived around the world, and the prospect of turning eighty years old. Soon, they realized that their stories of successes, failures, and everything in between were worth documenting. So, they each wrote accounts of their lives so far, with their high school years being the only connection between the varied paths they took, and collected them in this book.