Five members of the Mars High School Class of 1936 observed a moment of silence and said a prayer for their classmates who have died. The five are half of the number of classmates who are still living. But this did not depress the mood of the yearly class luncheon Friday, which included family and friends at the Kaufman House in Zelienople. They ate fudge and exchanged stories. More importantly, they remembered experiences shared by the 47-member class. Five of the remaining 10 were unable to attend the 67-year reunion. Those who did attend reminisced about the great flood that hit Pittsburgh in March of the year they graduated. The flood claimed the lives of dozens of people and left more than 100,000 homeless. Mars escaped flooding, but the high school class still was affected. Their parents, who were forced to stay home from work, took many of them to see the damage the high waters wrought in Pittsburgh. "My father came and took us out of school," recalled class Secretary Mildred Schar, formerly Mildred Pinkerton. "It was devastating to see." Schar, 85, of Mars, remembered seeing the first floor of the former Horne's department store engulfed in water. A decidedly different and more congested community exists in Mars these days, compared to the one they knew growing up. The suburbs have stretched out from Pittsburgh, and the area now called the North Hills of Pittsburgh once was known as South Butler, said Ruth Kline, formerly Ruth Wilson, of Mars. After graduating from the high school, she worked as an executive secretary at U.S. Steel and also served on the Mars Planning Commission. Kline remains politically active and still attends government meetings in Mars and Cranberry. Leo Woods, 86, of Penn Hills, was the only black person in the graduating class. He never experienced prejudice at the school, he said. The Great Depression had hit the countryside, and "we were one big happy family," he recalled. Growing up in Mars, Woods and his four younger siblings lived and worked on 2,400 acres of the J. C. Trees property. His father was the butler, and his mother was the cook. He worked on the fruit farm. Back then, he recalled, "There was a saying, 'Apples from Mars are out of this world.' " Woods went on to work as a teacher for Pittsburgh Public Schools. He always remained fond of Mars and brought students there on field trips so they could get a respite from the inner city and experience the countryside. He recalled how one small student stepped down off the bus and looked around bewildered at the greenery that surrounded her. "Jesus Christ, what a big back yard," the girl said, prompting him to clutch his heart. This year's reunion came with a moment of poignancy. The former classmates took time to think of one's ailing son. They passed around a card for the son, who is struggling to recover from cancer. "If anything happens to one, it happens to all of us," Kline said.

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