A note on privacy: We do not disclose details about our guests or their events without permission. Private celebrations are described only in general terms, and names and photos appear only when a guest has said yes.

Fifty years is a long time. On Saturday, the Murphy High School Class of 1976 fit it all into one room.

Sixty-eight classmates and guests came back to The Ballroom for their 50th class reunion — some from across town, some from across the country. Half a century since graduation. There were yearbooks, there were photos from the seventies that should probably stay in the seventies, and there was a lot of the particular kind of laughter that only happens when people who knew you at seventeen get you in a room again.

Reunions are some of our favorite nights in this building. The room holds a hundred, so sixty-eight old friends had space to spread out — tables for dinner, room for the photo displays, and corners for the conversations that needed catching up. A ballroom that started life as a post office in 1950 has seen most of these folks' whole lives happen in this town — and for one evening, it gets to hold the reunion version: everybody a little grayer, nobody in a hurry to leave.

Class of '76, thanks for spending your fifty years with us. See you at fifty-five.