Fifty-four years ago our class performed The Wizard of Oz for our senior play. I won’t name all the ones that held leading roles in the play for fear of leaving someone out, but it turned out to be a pretty good production.

Surprisingly, the storyline turned out to be a fitting end to our days at Louisville High School and a harbinger of our lives to come. Just over a hundred of us embarked upon a journey to find our versions of Emerald City.

Along our journey we encountered a lot of obstacles we had to overcome. We made new friends along our way, but we also discovered that not everyone we encountered had our best interests at heart.

Life happened to us, and when we came to that infamous fork in the road each of us had a decision to make. We soon learned that around every corner were more choices. To go left, or to go right. To take the high road, or to take the low road.

As we look back on our individual journeys, it’s easy to see that we didn’t always make the best choices, and we didn’t make it this far on our own. We learned God, family, friends, coworkers and even strangers helped us along our way.

Life didn’t hand out participation trophies as we were making our way down the Yellow Brick Road. There were times life was downright hard, and things didn’t seem fair, but most of us finally reached Emerald City, or we can now see it just over the horizon.

After fifty-four years, we’ve learned that reaching Emerald City wasn’t what it was all about. Not really. It was about the journey. Now we know we didn’t need a wizard to show us the way home or give us token accolades. We’ve come to realize we had the power within ourselves all along. All we had to do was dig deep, look within ourselves and do our best.

Well, look at us now. We are older. We are wiser. We’ve worn out a lot of shoes over the years traveling down that Yellow Brick Road and few of us look anything like we did when we stepped off the stage back in 1970. But we made it home again.

I hope life was kind to you along the way, and I hope the journey exceeded your expectations.

Here’s to the class of Seven O.

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Rick Algood
August 10, 2024