Several years ago, Patti and I hosted a Christmas party at our house. I had invited a couple of guys that I worked with, Jerry and Paul, to the party. As these two guys entered the house, one of them looked around, and seeing the place was full of people asked, "Who are all these people?" Before I could answer the question, the second guy, Jerry said, "McKinley people."

Paul replied, "I'm in contact with one person I went to high school with." Then Jerry said, "I'm not in contact with any, but I know that nearly every time we go to lunch, Lou is always excusing himself from the table to go say hello to someone at another table. Before he can explain who he is going to say hello to, I tell him, 'Yeah...I know...someone from McKinley.' They are everywhere we go and they all stay in touch with each other. I've never seen anything like it."

Then, one of the two asked, "There seems to be a large age range of these people. They were not all in your graduating class were they?" I told him no, the McKinley phenomenon transcended individual graduating classes, and actually spanned decades of graduating classes. The only requirement to be part of the phenomenon was that you had to have gone to McKinley.

-- Lou Lewis