FREEPORT – Eleven of the 15 surviving members of the Freeport High School class of 1949 gathered last Wednesday for a class reunion, reminiscing about old friends and fun times.

Ann Macomber Robertson, class secretary, and her husband, James, were two of the 34 seniors who graduated that year. Back then, Freeport High was located at the site of the present Town Hall, and the building has undergone additions and renovations.

Though many of the classmates have health problems, the turnout for this 65th reunion pleased everyone.

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Robertson said.

Class of ‘49 members brought their spouses, of course, and other guests to the reunion, held at Tody Brook Golf Course in North Yarmouth. They saw old photographs on a slide show. Fresh-cut gladiolas adorned a table, which also featured items that were auctioned, such as a throw, cookbooks, a purse and a Cuisinart egg cooker. Old friends greeted each other with smiles, hugs and kisses.

“We’re the 49ers,” Robertson exclaimed as she sat at one of the tables, showing classmates a tattered but precious 1949 issue of Clarion, the school yearbook. “This yearbook has seen a lot of years, like I have.”

Robertson showed everyone the first article in the ‘49 Clarion, an appreciation of the new high school gymnasium written by late classmate Winnie Litchfield.

“This was worked on when we were seniors in high school, and we were very proud of our new gym,” she said. “It was used for basketball games and it was used for plays. When a train came through and we were having a play, they had to close the curtain while the train went by.”

At the time and for many years later, Freeport playing in the old “Triple C,” or Cumberland County Conference.

“It was the largest and best floor in the Triple C league,” Robertson said proudly.

The former Ann Macomber and James Robertson dated for quite some time in high school, and married in 1954. She attended Fisher Secretarial School, now Fisher College in Boston, while he served with the Army in the Korean War. They couple lived in Boston for some years, then returned to the area in 1967.

Lou Haskell of Portland served as the master of ceremonies for the reunion. Haskell grew up in Pownal, and rode to school with the late Dickie Tryon, who had a car. There were no school buses from Pownal to Freeport in those days. Once in a great while, Haskell rode his bicycle the 71?2 miles to school.

Haskell went to a one-room schoolhouse in Pownal. He was one of four eighth-graders, two choosing to attend Freeport High and the other two North Yarmouth Academy.

Freeport, of course, was not a shopping mecca in those days.

“It was a village then with people living in it,” Haskell said. “It was a big deal for us going to a big school.”

Haskell said his best high school memories were planning the school trip to Washington, D.C., and running the movie projector for assemblies.

Barbara Libby Ryder lived on Durham Road in Freeport, and took the bus to school.

“It was a very good group,” Ryder said of her classmates. “We were very close.”

Ryder said she’s got plenty of health issues, but she looks forward to the next reunion, which the class holds on an annual basis.

“There’s a lot of us who are right on the borderline, but hopefully we can hold on and make it to 70,” she said. “I’m up and going and I plan on being there for a few more years.”

As she spoke, the classmates listened to music from their era, coming from a portable sound system.

Their music? Country and big bands.

“We didn’t have anything like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’” Ryder said.

Ryder recalled that Miss Little was a great shorthand and typing teacher.

“She was a beautiful teacher, but if you didn’t do things right, she’d come by with her ruler,” she said.

Ryder, who worked in shoe shops and at “five-and-dimes,” now lives on Wardtown Road, in a home that her father built.

“I’ve been there for 39 years,” she said. “Houses there were built for boys coming home from the service. My brother, Sewall Libby, was a cook, and served in England. He came home with his wife and child, and was the first one to live there.”

Frank Weymouth, who now lives in Kentucky, was attending the reunion for the third consecutive year. He sat down near Ryder, and gave her something to chuckle about.

“You were about the only one I could dance half decent with,” he told her.

Clayton Weed, sitting, gets a kick out of something that Ted Coffin, right, told him while Weed’s sister, Louise Weed Grover, listens during the 65th Freeport High School class of 1949 reunion last Wednesday at Tody Brook Golf Course in North Yarmouth. Clayton Weed was an invited guest from the class of ‘48. Members of the Freeport High School class of 1949 gathered last Wednesday at Tody Brook Golf Course in North Yarmouth for their 65th reunion. In front, from left, are Ted Coffin, Louise Weed Grover, Bettyjean Winslow Hilton, Jane Walsh Brewer and Virginia Libby Allen. In back are Lou Haskell, Barbara Libby Ryder, Frank Weymouth, Leo Simmons, Ann Macomber Robertson and her husband, James Robertson.