When New Trier High School welcomed back alumni from the Class of 1954 Saturday, they were the first-ever class to gather for their 70th reunion, according to Class President Bernard Rinella. The class, with an average age of 88, is the longest in the school’s history to keep celebrating reunions, he emphasized.
The class of 1954 also includes an Academy Award Best Actor nominee, a founder of the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Skokie, and a former CEO and publisher who led the Chicago Tribune in the 1990s. Around 28 alumni attended the event on Saturday, according to Rinella.
New Trier East High School Principal Denise Dubravec gave the class a tour of the school, which Rinella said lasted about an hour and boasted facilities rivaling those of major league sporting arenas.
“It’s incredible, just incredible,” Rinella said.
According to New Trier High School District 203 Communications Coordinator Lia Fahs, prior to 1967, all New Trier students graduated from the Winnetka campus. New Trier West High School opened in Northfield in the mid-1960s, was a separate high school from 1965 to 1981.
Alumni came from all over the country, including California, Ohio and Michigan, for this past weekend’s reunion, said Rinella, who organizes the reunions as class president. The class of 1954 typically has reunions every 10 years and has also done them every five years.
“The tour guides were excellent to answer any questions we had relative to the classrooms,” Rinella said. “They took us through all these venues, which were very interesting and certainly two notches up from when we went to school there.”
John W. Madigan, retired chairman and CEO of the Tribune Company, as it was called at the time, was also a graduate of the class of 1954. He said he was impressed by the breakout areas, where students can socialize. and the auditoriums.
“The athletic facilities were so much nicer than our old gym,” Madigan observed.
“As a taxpayer living in Winnetka, I was glad to see the money being put to good use. I was dazzled by all the improvements and wonderful things they’ve done for the students.”
Actor Bruce Dern, who was nominated for an Academy Award for the 2014 movie “Nebraska,” was a member of the Class of 1954. Though not at the reunion, New Trier’s Educational Foundation honored him in 2022 as a member of the Alumni Hall of Fame.
Sam Harris, a founder of the Illinois Holocaust Museum in Skokie and a Holocaust survivor, attended the reunion.
“We feel privileged to have gone to such an outstanding school,” Harris said. “At the time, New Trier was considered number one in the country. And after visiting again, all the modern amenities that we have there now, it’s just as good and it’s even better than most colleges,” he said.
Harris said the athletic amenities, like the swimming pool and handball courts, felt like a country club.
Both Rinella and Harris had questions about how the school was reacting to protests concerning the armed conflict between Israel and Hamas. According Rinella and Harris, New Trier staff said they took security seriously, and that there is no anti-Semitism on campus.
District 203 Director of Communications Niki Dizon said, “We have committed to making New Trier a place where every student, staff member and family feels welcome and that they belong. We celebrate and support students in their own identities so they can learn and thrive at school, and we do not tolerate any form of hate,” she said.
