Patchogue High School Class of 1971 Reunites

Patchogue High School's Class of 1971 recently held its 40th reunion at the in East Patchogue and an icebreaker at in Patchogue Village.

The last class to be known as Patchogue High School, instead of the current Patchogue-Medford High School, consisted of roughly 400 members and graduated from - now a middle school.

More than 100 of the members gathered for this year's reunion. One earned the honor of travelling the furthest; Bruce Spector returned from St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands where he resides with his wife and is a practicing attorney.

"I haven't been back to Patchogue in 40 years. [The reunion committee] found me a few months ago. A postcard arrived in the mail and I knew that my wife and I were planning a trip to the States around this time so we planned it around this," Spector said.

Only in Patchogue for the one day, Spector commented that "just about everything wasn't here" when he left in the 70s.

"I had a very positive experience in high school. I really enjoyed school here - the academic classes I was in, so many of my teachers were wonderful," he said. "It played a huge role in my going to college; I was the first person in my family to graduate high school much less go to college and then go to law school."

One of the committee members, LaNel Pontieri Kavander, a recently retired teacher from the Patchogue-Medford School District fondly remembers when she pledged for a soriority in high school.

"There were three [soriorties] - Theta, Dunca and Delta. I pledged Theta because of my friends, it's the one that they went into. It's my favorite memory because it was a whole week of being with my friends. I was in it for all three years," Kavander said.

Priscilla Garcia Powers still resides in Patchogue with her five children and is currently a librarian at Dowling College.

"My friends are one of the main reasons I enjoyed high school," Powers said. "The classes were good but friends made them fun."

Check the for highlights from the reunion.