Sometimes it takes a class reunion to revive an old friendship

Every year Sara Stubbins takes a trip to celebrate her birthday. One year that meant skydiving in Missouri, and the next, zip lining in Costa Rica, the 70th country she has been to. This year, she decided to visit northern Florida, where she had a chance to stay with one of our classmates, Diane Ellis Racano, in Jacksonville.

Sara Stubbins and Diane Ellis Racano

Diane calls Sara her oldest friend; their friendship started in ballet class when they were 6 years old. Sara and Diane stayed in touch through our junior high and AAHS years. Both played the violin in orchestra and they also met up at the First Methodist Church, where a whole pack of our class members were involved in MYF and where Sara’s mother was the longtime—and long-revered—organist. Their lives later went in very different directions, with Sara’s global lifestyle taking her to live in Khartoum, Venezuela and China, among other unexpected places, and Diane living in a renovated farmhouse in Switzerland, with a view of the French Alps across Lake Geneva. They ran into each other again at the 50-year reunion, meeting for a chat after the Friday night pizza party in the hotel bar (where Ned Farrar pulled out his violin to play, delighting everyone in the room). That led to Sara’s visit this year to see Diane, her husband, Vince, and their cats, Zia and Ziggy Stardust, for a special birthday in Florida.