STANWOOD — When Gil Emory and his former classmates get together at his house, the conversations sound much like you’d expect at a high school reunion, as old friends catch up on each other’s families, activities and ailments.

But what sets the Arlington High School graduating class of 1950 apart from most is that it’s still getting together after 65 years.

Jim Brothers confessed that his doctor placed his life expectancy at 87, just shy of when the 70-year reunion would be held, since the class meets every five years.

The class of ’50 originally touted at least 70 students, but now there’s 16 members. Valedictorian Frank Prather read aloud from a list of the names of the departed, before their peers lined up for a potluck.

“Just hope your name isn’t on there in five years,” Emory said.

Far from a morbid affair, though, the gathering was a celebration of life.

While Prather moved to California, Dell Foster stayed local, moving to Carnation in 1959. Still, the boy who was born on a farm boasted that he never left family farming.

“I grew up on the prairie where the Safeway is now,” Foster said, noting that Highway 9 didn’t arrive until right around when he left. “I remember the surveyor kept putting up stakes around our land, and I kept cutting them down with my Model-A John Deere,” he laughed.

Former Arlington teacher Ruth Porter Munizza joined her students, and took the time to praise Edna Bulle Sebers and Ellen Bergevin Dodge for their talent at sports.

“Your mom was one of my good athletes,” Munizza, the wife of former school coach Larry Munizza, told Nancy Sebers Putnam, the daughter of Sebers.

“It’s fun to see these old pictures,” Putnam said as she paged through a class yearbook. “She hasn’t changed a bit.”

“My hair got a little lighter,” Sebers laughed.

Munizza taught at the old high school for four years, and had to receive permission to marry her husband, since they taught at the same school.

“When the new principal said we couldn’t teach at the same school, I quit,” Munizza said.

Sebers has only just recently completed her 22 years of living on the road in her RV, after she sold her house in Lake Stevens. She played tennis, but emphasized that girls weren’t allowed to compete in sports against other schools.

As for Dodge, she loved tumbling and acrobats, but didn’t rate her own skills as highly as Munizza.

“I loved performing, though,” Dodge said.

Prather couldn’t remember who the class salutatorian was, even though he considered her to be at least as good a student as he was.

“I got all As, except for chemistry, which I hated,” Prather said. “Her grades were as good as mine, but she’d just moved there her senior year.”

After attending college in Ellensberg, Prather met his future wife in California in the early 1970s. He retired from teaching music in 1991.

By contrast, former football star Art Lee moved no further than Bellingham. As he and Emory traded tales of their time in the military, he reflected on the regimen that had kept him going through 25 years in the Marine Corps.

“I must have done 300 road races, starting in the Philippines,” said Lee, a Vietnam veteran who still hikes hills and walks while carrying weights. “I had a head injury that broke all the straps in my football helmet, but I was able to join the military by promising I wouldn’t file for disability. I’ve stayed close to the Lord, and I’ve lived to drink about it.”

“That would have been too much for me,” Emory said. “I did Korea, and then got out and went right back to the sawmill.”

“I’m impressed that they all still know each other’s names,” said Putnam, as she watched her mother interact with her classmates. “I don’t think I would. It really makes you realize how precious life is.”