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Virus quashes Old Times Reunion plans BY KRISTINE CANNON Progress Staff Writer
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o celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary in 1961, Lester and Labeula Steiner Mowry hosted a party at their house – but this wasn’t your average anniversary party. The party only marked the beginning of a nearly 60-year annual event they then called the Scottsdale Old Times Reunion. “They started it because of they wanted a way to get together for some other reasons besides funerals,” said Eleanor Brierly, Labeula’s daughter and treasurer of the Scottsdale Historical Society. But on what would have been the reunion’s 59th year, the event was canceled due to restrictions on gatherings of more than 10 people. “And for us to have to wait a whole ‘nother year, we could lose two or three more [attendees],” Brierly said. Labeula and her sister, Thelma Steiner Holveck, held the annual event �irst at Labuela’s home. They invited residents, former residents, people who attended Scottsdale schools, teachers, and friends. The event eventually outgrew the Mowry house after the �irst �ive years, averaging anywhere from 80 to 100 attendees, and was relocated to the Eldorado Park Community Center. Labuela and Holveck called the event “Old Timers” because attendees had to have lived in Scottsdale since before 1930. “But over the years, of course, that has been relaxed and relaxed and relaxed because people die,” she added. And that’s why they needed to host this year’s event: They’re afraid of losing even more attendees. “We’re losing them every year,” Brierly said. “It went from the original founders and attendees to the next generation now. That third generation has not stepped forward, so every year it’s
This photo was taken by Lois McFarland at the Scottsdale High School Old Timers Reunion on March 28, 1987. From left, Bill Cavalliere (Class of 1931), Dorothy Cavalliere Roberts (Class of 1933), and Fred “Yam” Cavalliere (Class of 1940). (Scottsdale Public Library)
Eleanor Mowry Brierly gets help from her sisters to continue hosting the Scottsdale Old Timers Reunion. This year’s reunion, however, was canceled. (Scottsdale Public Library)
smaller and smaller and smaller due to the fact that we are losing them.” Brierly has taken part in the reunions for 30 years.
Over the past 20 years, she’s helped organize the event alongside her sisters JoAnn Mowry Handley, Diana Mowry Green, and Rebecca Mowry. The event was supposed to take place last Sunday, but on March 10, they were noti�ied that the community center would close. The attendees’ response “was all pretty much the same, which was ‘darn,’” Brierly said. “People started sending donations because they know we have to pay for the room, so we had to send the donations back.” Brierly said they look forward to touching base with people they don’t see on a regular basis. “These are people whose parents were in the original group; and a number of families have moved up into the Verde Valley area, and so we don’t see them at all,” she said, adding, “It’s touching base, �inding out how many people have great grand-
kids and whose health is gone — that kind of thing.” Brierly credits the longevity of the annual event to the closeness of the families and the bonds many of the attendees made growing up in Scottsdale together. “This was a tiny county,” she said. “These people all had the Little Red Schoolhouse. They went to Scottsdale High School (SHS) when it opened. They all had this closeness. We all came from that era. Thirties, ‘20s, ‘30s, ‘40s, ‘50s — that strong bond is there.” Brierly was among the 46 who graduated from SHS in 1953. Her father, Lester, was in the �irst SHS graduating class of 1923. Brierly’s children, on the other hand, attended Coronado High School. “They don’t have high school friends,” she said. “I still have a group of high school friends. We’re very close, closer than sisters in some cases.” Brierly isn’t sure how much longer they’ll be able to keep up the annual event. “It’s now a matter of, how much energy do we have? How much longer can we do this? As much as our hearts want to do it forever and ever, that’s not reality,” she said. While the future of the event might be unclear, that doesn’t mean they won’t host the reunion next year. “I really felt bad that we had to cancel as we all are getting older and might not be able to go next year. I am 88. Next year, I will be 89,” Handley said. “I will be helping to put the reunion on next year come heck or high water.” “It’s not that any of us are saying we want to go back to that age. It’s just that we don’t want to forget it. It’s part of who makes us, what makes us strong, what makes us the people that we are. It’s part of what we want to impart to our kids, which is how precious life is in the moment you’re living it because that’s your history in 20 years,” Brierly said.
