SEQUIM — Mabel (Heine) Sorensen had a two-for-one celebration at the Mariner Cafe. It was her 96th birthday and 78th high school reunion.
Sorensen was joined by classmate Robert “Bob” Clark, who will turn 95 in November, and some of their family members.
“I just think it’s important historically,” Clark said of keeping the reunion going.
“We really don’t see one another much otherwise, and it’s very nice to be able to get together socially,” Sorensen said.
They are two of four surviving graduates from the class. Clark said 51 students graduated from Sequim High School in 1947. Dorothy (Daniels) Ludke and Mary Ellen (Dryke) Pogue were unable to attend this year’s reunion.
“Our first class reunion was after 10 years, and there had been so much that happened in 10 years that we decided after that we’d meet every five years for a reunion,” Clark said.
“We did, and now we’re down to once a year simply because there’s so few of us.”
The luncheon was the first time the Class of 1947 had met since 2022.
Looking back, the two classmates agreed they got along with their fellow students, particularly Sorensen. She said becoming lifelong friends with classmate and neighbor Lois Reposa stood out to her as a favorite memory of growing up in Sequim.
“When I first moved to Blyn … we lived in a little home down on the waterfront … and there was another little girl (Reposa),” she said.
“There weren’t many kids in Blyn at that time … and Lois and I got together and they called us Siamese twins. We absolutely loved each other.”
Clark, who graduated when he was 15, said freshman initiation still stands out to him. Boys wore dresses and girls came in bathing suits, he said.
Clark said, while wearing a dress, he had to push a peanut across a stage while being paddled on the bottom.
“They did away with it,” Clark said of the initiations.
“The last time they had the freshman initiation was the year my brother (Elliott “Bud”) was a freshman and I was a senior. What a wonderful opportunity!”
Clark was an eight-term Clallam County treasurer who retired in 1995 from decades of public service and six years with the Washington State Grange.
He and his late wife Glenda (Dickinson) Clark, another Sequim pioneer family member, had three children, and now have six grandchildren, 16 great grandchildren and one great-great grandchild.
Sorensen met her now-late husband Donald her first night at Washington State University. They raised four children and now have six grandchildren and 16 great grandchildren.
Sorensen said she still lives in the same house she moved into when she was 15.
Sequim
Both Clark and Sorensen said it has been wonderful to live in Sequim for so long and see it grow.
“It’s God’s country,” Clark said. “I was born here 94 years ago about four blocks away from (the restaurant). In fact, the house is still standing.”
On his 90th birthday, he went to the front door and introduced himself to the current owners. They were so thrilled that they asked him to come back for a photo.
“I came back and they had dressed up for the picture,” Clark said.
Sorensen distinctly remembers the sign outside the city growing up, gesturing with her hand, “It says ‘Sequim, where water is wealth. Population 602.’”
That small-town feel is something both graduates feel has been an important part of their lives.
Sorensen encourages upcoming graduates and other students to “appreciate the small town that you still have and your childhood friends that you have known forever.”
“I think a small town has so many good things about it,” she said.
Clark said he “absolutely” appreciates Sequim and that he’s been able to spend his life there.
“I got through marriage and everything and I’m related to half the town, except the newcomers that have come in,” he joked.
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Matthew Nash is a reporter with the Olympic Peninsula News Group, which is composed of Sound Publishing newspapers Peninsula Daily News, Sequim Gazette and Forks Forum. He can be reached by email at matthew.nash@sequimgazette.com.
