Rebecca Nappi

My friend Chris joined Alpha Delta Pi at Washington State University in 1971. The sorority sisters from her era, now in their late 50s and early 60s, gather together at least twice a year. They have a built-in community of support and often share advice and stories that help them on their aging journey. The women recently gathered on Whidbey Island, Wash., and, as always, Chris returned to Spokane with many wise and fun thoughts collected in discussions with the two dozen women there, including:

On July 8, longtime Spokane firefighter John Knighten was laid to rest in Spokane at a funeral attended by hundreds of firefighters. One of Knighten’s pallbearers, firefighter Mike Rose, walked with the coffin as flag-bearer, a folded American flag against his chest. Suddenly, Rose collapsed next to the coffin. Spokesman-Review photographer Colin Mulvany caught the look of shock and concern on the faces of the other pallbearers and on the face of Brian Schaeffer, assistant fire chief, who rushed over and thought: “Mike is dying, and it’s happening with an audience of several hundred of his friends and colleagues.”

The nude swimming item in last week’s Boomer U urban legends story generated several emails and phone calls from older men who confirmed that, indeed, boys throughout the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s were often required to swim sans bathing suits. The reason for the practice, started in YMCAs throughout the country in the 1890s? Wooly fibers from old-style swimming trunks clogged pool filters. Wool suits were obsolete by the middle of the 20th century, but the practice continued anyway.

If you are walking in Audubon Park Sunday around noon and see about 80 people gathered around picnic tables, and many look like they could be related to each other, you have stumbled upon the annual Veltrie extended family picnic. This reunion picnic has been an annual gathering for 65 years. It’s all thanks to Savario “Sam” Veltrie and Josephine Veltrie, who came to the Inland Northwest from the “old country” – Grimaldi, Italy – in 1903.

Summer brain has set in. Here at Boomer U, we’re feeling nostalgic for all the lazy time we had in our 1960s childhoods, sharing stories – scary, creepy and spine-tingling.

Oliver Sacks, physician and writer best known for the book “Awakenings” and the movie based on it, turned 80 recently. In a July 6 New York Times essay he wrote about the grace and the sadness of that milestone. The author of a dozen fabulous books has few regrets, but he’s so accomplished that his regrets surprised me with their humility.

Recently, in our business section, we ran a wire story that was filled with good news about the economy. By 2020, McClatchy-Tribune reported, there will be 55 million new job openings; 31 million will be the result of baby boomers retiring. With the good news, some worries, of course. A labor shortage of 5 million workers is expected, and workers with college degrees and/or specialized training will be in high demand.

As you age, it’s fascinating to read stuff happening now that only existed in the imagination or in science fiction in childhood. Recently, Anne McClain, who grew up in Spokane, was tapped to be one of NASA’s eight newest astronaut trainees. The 34-year-old Gonzaga Prep and West Point Academy graduate has degrees in aerospace engineering and in international security. Plus, she’s a pilot.

We’ve had an influx of younger reporters in the newsroom in recent months, a very good thing indeed. So far, I haven’t had the opportunity to regale them with stories about how we did journalism research in the days before the Internet.

On May 26, in The Spokesman-Review, we asked readers to submit original verses that anyone can use on memorial service programs handed out at funerals. You wouldn’t expect a memorial verse writing “contest” to elicit funny prose and poems, but it did. A few anyway.

We baby boomers were the first fast-food/junk-food generation. Lucky Charms – sugar lumps in the guise of a breakfast cereal – was created in 1962.

The Spokesman-Review’s outdoors guru, Rich Landers, led a hike at Riverside State Park during recent festivities celebrating the park’s 100th anniversary. He got a good crowd, and what I appreciated most was that the hike along the Spokane River lasted just 40 minutes, with an option to extend another 40 minutes at the end. I did the first 40 minutes, and it was lovely and plenty for me.

I call it my “check rebellion.” Companies we pay bills to try to coax us away from paying the old-fashioned way – by check. We pay some bills online and some by automatic deduction, but we still write checks for a few bills. My mom and dad taught me how to write checks in the 1970s when I had my first bills to pay. It’s a fond memory.

Over the long Memorial Day weekend, we got a fax and voice message from family and friends of Frank “Sully” Sullivan who was in a Spokane hospital recovering from heart surgery. He’s 90, and his surgery went well. His loved ones wondered if the newspaper would be interested in highlighting Sullivan’s World War II story. The voicemail and fax didn’t reach us until Tuesday when the holiday had passed, and because Sullivan isn’t from the Spokane area, we might not have done the story anyway.