Retro RFHers’ Christmas Break Party Time — Rumson-Fair Haven Retrospect

When the main Christmas festivities are over and Santa skips town, it’s time for all good RFHers who are on that first college break to reunite and resume the reunion party before their graduation year ends.

This party? Well, it was among an RFH couple and crew that somehow missed this pic in 1978. Fear not, though, we’ve been told they’ll show eventually. They were, no doubt, chasing down Santa as he made away with the leftover gifts for the unrepentant naughty.

The two left behind, though, were an RFH couple who went their separate college ways and found their way back, as all RFHers usually do, to that hometown hoopla for the holidays. No one really cared about the runaway red-suited man or that bag full of coal, anyway.

The whole crew of motley miscreants, so we’re told and pretty much know, had their groove goin’ on at this little party at someone’s parents’ house. We’re thinking it may have been the home of the guy in the pic, Jeff Dupree, clad in the ol’ RFH varsity football jacket. His girl was Nancy Whelchel. This was an RFH scholar-athlete duo.

The rest? Well, forget about them for now. It’s all about another reason for the season. First reunions. Party time. And party, we’re pretty confident, they did. Mostly, though, it’s about the thrill of the new at college and coming home to the not-so-old for the first time. There was no better gift for the holidays for an 18-year-old RFHer. No better.

There was the reminiscing of that milestone senior year at RFH, the laughs and the love that just never dies. Remembering brings us back to what and who made us who we really are — like a kid at Christmas believing in all the magic. And magic it was to have these best buds in our lives. Those times, they never change. They are us. Gifted with gold.

And the golden gift was reopened for Welchel this year, 46 years later, when this photo reared its Kodak head this Christmas.

“I’ve just pulled about 75 boxes out of the crawl space, none of which had seen the light of day for 25+ years …,” Welchel said in a social media post. “In quickly going thru a box of random photos I found this one from Xmas 1978, with my then HS boyfriend Jeff. What a great time that was, with our HS gang together for the first time since leaving for our 1st year of college.”

Firsts. They’re always a gift, Santa be damned. The party’s in the other room, kids!

It doesn’t have to be a holiday, but that works and the decorations just make it more festive. It’s always the right time to go back and reignite that magic in the memories. Now, where’s the next party for the next first? Your college break reunion party story? Do tell!