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Early Rogue River graduates share memories, catch up on lives now Annual picnic reunites more than 300 friends By MELISSA MARTIN ROGUE RIVER -- The Great Depression, World War II, walking a mile to school along Evans Creek, riding to the football game in a Model A Ford, learning what it means to work hard on the farm. Nearly 200 graduates of Rogue River High School who share these experiences will gather Sunday at Palmerton Park for a reunion picnic. "I get to see my best friend every year -- we've been friends since we were 8 years old," says Lucille Magerle Oatney, who graduated in 1938. The Rogue River High School Old Timers Picnic started in 1982 as a way for graduates to remember old times and catch up on the latest news. The organizers make name tags for 329 people who come from as far away as New Jersey and Hawaii, but as also as close as Wimer. " I was surprised when I started keeping this list that there were that many people still living in Oregon," says Virginia Campbell Kile of Phoenix, who attended Rogue River schools when she was a child. Rogue River High has had its share of celebrities, says Jennie Bunce Giesen, a 1943 graduate. She and her husband, Rusty, a 1941 graduate and World War II veteran, have four children who are alumni, including one who is a retired Marine colonel and another who is an emergency room doctor in Grants Pass. Other Rogue River success stories include an alum who is a retired Princeton professor and graduates who have published books. "Most of the people at the picnic grew up in the Depression or World War II years and there is a togetherness that people want to hold on to," says David Dunlap, a picnic organizer. He's a 1947 graduate who served in the Navy during the Korean years. In the 1950s, he worked in the aerospace industry, helping to launch the first U.S. satellite into space. He retired from Tektronix Inc. in Beaverton and moved back to the Rogue Valley in 1983. For Jennie Giesen, attending school in the lean years meant students did without yearbooks when ink and paper were rationed during the war. Gasoline wasn't available either, so the boys couldn't drive the girls to the prom, she says. Oatney agrees that walking was a way of life in those days. "We lived 2 miles out in the country and all of us kids would get together to go to a basketball game or go play at the school. We would start up the creek and walk down as a group," Oatney says. Oatney's logger father, Carl Magerle, graduated in 1918, three years after the school started. "We went to all 12 years of school in the same building," she says. "The high school was upstairs and the grade school was downstairs. You knew nearly everybody." Today's high school is located on the same property. It has as many students as the entire town of Rogue River used to have, Dunlop says. But one thing that students of 50 years ago have in common with students today is the lack of resources. "When we grew up, there wasn't anything extra," Dunlap says. "Teachers had to buy their own supplies. I personally believe we are happier when we have to work for something. It makes you feel like you belong." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA