Clements seeks new ideas for HHS Alumni Banquet
Last May, Linda Clements, a 1982 graduate of Holton High School, was celebrating her class’ 40-year reunion at the HHS Alumni Banquet when she heard that there was talk that the annual banquet — the cornerstone event of the annual Glory Days weekend — “was going to go by the wayside.”
Clements eventually decided that wasn’t going to happen on her watch.
“When they did the surveys after last year’s banquet, I said I was more than happy to help with this year’s, and I’m not usually one of those who says yes, yes, yes,” she said. “But I was contacted a few weeks ago and they said, ‘We’re not going to be around, and you said you wouldn’t mind helping. Would you still consider that?’ And I said yes.”
With the 2023 alumni event approaching, Clements is looking for lots of help to make this year’s banquet, set for Saturday, May 27, an event that Wildcat graduates will be talking about — one that will have them looking forward to, and spreading the word about, next year’s banquet.
“I want to get people’s interest piqued. I want them to get excited like I do,” she said. “I want people who graduated from Holton High to come to the banquet because it’s fun and you get to see all these people… This was their school.”
Having been born and raised in Holton, Clements said that long before there was a Glory Days celebration, the HHS Alumni Banquet, held over Memorial Day weekend, was “a big deal,” and to her, it still is. But over time, attendance at the banquet has waned — and the COVID-19 pandemic, the reason the 2020 and 2021 banquets were canceled, “didn’t help anything.”
She said she’s also heard comments from people in attendance at the banquet who found it to be a rather dull affair.
“Every time I go to the banquet, I hear a lot of them coming out saying, ‘I’ll never go to another.’ Or, ‘I went to another one, and it was horrible,’” she said.
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