Last Dance, Last Chance

This is a column of mine, with slight modifications, that appeared in the Aug. 31, 2010, edition of The Brunswick News.

I have a friend "back home" who likes to crash reunions.

My friend Will did not attend my high school because his parents enrolled him in a high school the next town over. But, having attended junior high and played ball with the public school kids, he keeps many of those friendships alive even 36 years later, partially by crashing reunions.

On Saturday night, I felt a little like Will.

For weeks, I had been planning on attending the Wrecking Ball, which was billed as the "last dance" at the Jekyll Island Convention Center. The concept was developed to kick off this year's United Way capital campaign and to celebrate nearly 50 years of events in the convention center, especially Atlantic Hall, which locals still affectionately refer to as the "Aquarama."

In actuality, the Aquarama was a swimming and diving complex that ceased to exist in the early 1990s, shortly after the completion of the Summer Waves Water Park.

Atlantic Hall, with its round shape and vernacular design, looks like it might have been featured in the 1960s cartoon series, "The Jetsons." All that's missing is the moving sidewalks.

But I digress.

Music junkie that I am, I had waited with much anticipation to listen to the music of the Class of '69 Reunion Band, O.S.K.A.R. Rockhammer and finally, Mason Waters and the Groove All-Stars.

The bands respectively covered three decades of music - the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s - and had the crowd on its feet.

From the opening notes of "Start Me Up" covered by the reunion band and initially performed by The Rolling Stones, the dancing never stopped. Not even after the All-Stars completed perhaps the most fitting song, near the close of the evening, Donna Summer's "Last Dance."

I knew many people there, and it was for a good cause, but I still felt a little like a party crasher.

Even when I saw the hall "tricked out" on Saturday night, with beach-themed food and table presentations by Straton Hall, including costumed servers from each time period represented, I finally got a glimpse of what the locals find so endearing about the place.

Barbara and Mason Stewart, both Glynn Academy graduates, wore the costumes of their era - she was clad in a pink "poodle" skirt and saddle oxford shoes; he in a lifeguard ensemble, which was fitting because he worked as a lifeguard at the Aquarama for six years - through high school and college. They won the evening's costume competition, beating out folks dressed in everything from 1980s prom dresses to graduation gowns.

You see, most of the folks at the event were longtime Glynn County residents and a majority were Glynn Academy graduates.

They have memories of Atlantic Hall that I am barely able to envision occurring there, including proms, beauty pageants, dances, concerts and graduations.

My memories of Atlantic Hall are different. The annual Chamber of Commerce Trade Fair, the YWCA Tribute to Women Leaders, the annual state economic forecasting conference - are events that stick in my mind.

And soon, those memories will be all any of us have, when soon, the real "wrecking ball" descends upon that landmark and renders it nothing but dust.