Punxsutawney High School Class of ’52 : Millionaire Treats Classmates to Cruise

A millionaire eager to share his wealth with his childhood friends took his high school class along Friday for an air and sea fantasy ride to the Bahamas.

As school fight songs and confetti filled the air, more than 400 people, about half of them 1952 graduates of Pennsylvania’s Punxsutawney High School, left on a four-day cruise to celebrate their 35th-year reunion, a trip paid for by Kansas City businessman Delbert Dunmire.

“It could not be better,” Dunmire said from his Rolls-Royce convertible, which led Friday morning’s procession about 100 miles from Punxsutawney to Greater Pittsburgh International Airport.

The classmates and their guests boarded a chartered jet in Pittsburgh, where they were greeted by a polka band, then flew to Miami.

Celebrities and a Wedding

There, Dunmire, his wife and their giant party boarded a cruise ship for the weekend party that features celebrities, a three-member Dixieland band and a wedding.

“For one weekend, we’re back to (age) 18. Come Monday we get our gray beards and gray hair back,” said Dunmire, who was wearing a plastic red lei around his neck, pale yellow pants, a beige shirt and bright yellow sneakers.

For those lucky enough to graduate with Dunmire, it was a dream come true.

“It’s unreal. I keep pinching myself. It’s something we’ll remember the rest of our lives,” said Rose Smouse, who came from Buffalo, N.Y., with her husband, Chuck.

“It’s really nice the guy has success and he’s spreading it around. I’m glad he didn’t flunk a grade,” said her husband, also a classmate.

Wears Groundhog Costume

Growth Industries sales manager Charlie Abbott, who showed up in Miami in a groundhog costume, plans to get married in Nassau. Punxsutawney is best known for its weather-predicting groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil.

Also joining the party were Connie Stevens and Evel Knievel, the latter a friend of Dunmire. Frankie Avalon is expected to meet the group in the Bahamas.

Dunmire expects the tab for the group of approximately 420 people to run more than $420,000, including the cost of making videocassettes and photo albums for each class member.

“You’ve got to have that stuff,” he explained. “When you try to control the incidentals, you take some of the razzle-dazzle out of it.”

Dunmire, 53, described in his high school yearbook as “a wonderful guy with a warm, warm smile for everyone,” grew up the son of a railroad laborer in the nearby village of Cloe. He studied medicine in college for two years before joining the Air Force.

He robbed a bank in Abilene, Kan., in 1958 to pay off gambling debts and served two years in prison before being paroled with a desire to make good. Dunmire founded Growth Industries Inc., an airplane parts manufacturing company, in 1967 and promised himself: “If I ever make it big, I’ll come back and do something for my hometown.”