STANDISH – With 2012 signifying the 50th anniversary of the first class to graduate from Bonny Eagle High School, the class of 2012 has invited members of the class of 1962 to take part in this weekend’s graduation exercises.

Responding to the invitation to attend Friday night’s graduation ceremony at the Cumberland County Civic Center are six members, each of whom will march in with the class of 2012 and, with several thousand watching from the stands, will take their seat just behind the new graduates.

Among those in the class of 1962 is Bruce Haley. While the 67-year-old Limington farmer and trucking company owner is marking the 50th with fellow classmates, Haley will also be celebrating his daughter Andrea’s graduation from Bonny Eagle, and will march in alongside her and even have the honor of awarding her diploma.

Haley couldn’t be more thrilled about the doubly special occasion taking place Friday night.

“It’s pretty awesome and it’s going to be a special deal to march in with her,” Haley said. “I hope I can hold it all together. We’ve had a lot of people say, ‘Oh wow, there won’t be a dry eye in the place.’”

Haley, admittedly “a late bloomer” when it came time to having kids, sees the significance and serendipity of the event.

“This probably doesn’t happen very often, so this is quite a milestone to have a father with a daughter graduating 50 years later. So it’s quite a deal,” Haley said.

Andrea Haley, who is set to attend Morrisville State College in New York and is aiming for a career in psychiatric nursing, is similarly thrilled.

“It’s kind of surreal that he’ll hand me my diploma,” she said. “I’ll probably ball my eyes out. I’ve always been a daddy’s girl so I’ve always been really close to my dad. He’s not one to cry a lot. I maybe have seen him cry maybe three times in my life. But he’s been really emotional about this one.”

On the advice of a friend, Haley joked that during the big moment, if he feels himself tearing up, he’ll imagine baling hay out in his 100-acre field on Cape Road in Limington.

“Not sure if that’ll work though. We’ll give it a try if we have to,” Haley said.

Haley will have some support though, since five other class of 1962 graduates will be taking part in the ceremony. Among those are members of a hot rod club known back in 1962 as “The 97s.” Maurice “Pete” Goodson, Goodwin Hannaford and Eddie Brackett, who are scheduled to march, were members of the club that met once a week and was named after a popular carburetor’s model number.

“One of my highlights in high school was being member of the hot club, which back in those days were a really big deal,” said Goodson, now a resident of Concord, N.H. “We had matching jackets with logos and with a picture of a carburetor on the back of the jackets.”

Some of the members of The 97s went into the Navy after graduating from high school, Goodson among them. He served for six years, spending much of the time in the submarine service based out of Pearl Harbor. After 43 years working for telephone companies, he retired in 2010.

Prior to Friday night’s ceremony, Goodson plans to stay in his RV at Wassamki Springs Campground in Gorham with his wife of 48 years, Diana. He’s looking forward to seeing the class of 2012 at Friday night’s ceremony.

“I think it’s awesome,” Goodson said. “I think it’s a good chance for us to look over at them and see what we used to be like and for them to look over and see what they’re going to be like.”

There are few similarities between the classes of 1962 and 2012. While they each came from the district’s four towns of Hollis, Standish, Buxton and Limington, classes nowadays are numbered in the several hundreds, while the first graduates numbered about 75.

Haley attended Limington Academy prior to Limington consolidating with the other towns to form the Bonny Eagle school district. Even at 75 students in his class, Bonny Eagle seemed huge in 1962.

“Up here to the Limington Academy there was only eight to 10 of us, so when we moved to the new high school (for the 1961-1962 school year), it seemed enormous,” said Haley. “And there were like 75 in the class, which was unheard of for us folks out here in the country. But now, they’ve got 200 to 300 and sometimes 400. So it took a few days to figure out where we were going, and we maybe got lost a couple times the first few days. But now the high school is two to three times as big as it was.”

Another classmate, Donald Harmon, 68, who lives in Manchester, N.H., is looking forward to coming to Friday’s ceremony. A Buxton native, Harmon remembers entering Bonny Eagle in those early days and thinking it was large, but not too large to get associated with his fellow students.

“It was a big school for us at that time. It was kind of nice to go to another school and meet other people and be associated with the Standish and Hollis and Limington folks. So it was good,” he said. “These communities in a lot of cases, we associated with people in all the communities, in sports or clubs. We didn’t know everybody, but we knew some of the people. It wasn’t like a real shock to anybody’s system.”

While looking forward to taking part in graduation exercises and being recognized as a member of the school district’s first graduating class, Harmon, who remains friendly with Goodson, is also looking forward to seeing his childhood friends.

“I think it’s nice. I think it’ll be fun just to see some of my other friends,” Harmon said.

Bruce Haley, who was a member of the first graduating class after four towns consolidated to form the Bonny Eagle school district, will take part in Friday night’s graduation ceremony with five fellow classmates from Bonny Eagle’s first graduating class of 1962. While Haley celebrates the 50th anniversary of his graduation, his daughter, Andrea, is graduating along with Bonny Eagle’s class of 2012. (Courtesy photo)