Returning to Dettori fifty years after graduation: "As if time had stood still."
Carlo Diana promoted the initiative: he rebuilt contacts with almost all his classmates
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Fifty years after graduating, they returned to the same desks, in the same classroom where they completed their studies at the Dettori Classical High School in Cagliari. For a few hours, time seemed to stand still: black-and-white photographs, shared memories, and the seats they occupied half a century ago brought back the former VA students, gathered to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of their high school graduation.
The initiative was initiated by Carlo Diana, who reconnected with nearly all of his classmates about ten years ago . Thanks to the kindness of the principal and a former classmate who now teaches at the school, the group returned to the halls of the classical high school, visiting the assembly hall and then the old classroom of section A.
"Everyone returned to their historical place," Diana says. "We brought old photographs from those years and reunited as if time had never passed. It was moving to revisit the school that shaped us."
Also welcoming them was former professor and art historian Franco Masala, one of their longtime teachers. He was just 26 at the time and in his first year of teaching. "Seeing him again after fifty years was one of the greatest emotions of the day," Diana recounts. "He was an important teacher for us, and meeting him again in the very school where he accompanied us all the way to graduation made this meeting even more special."
Not everyone, however, was able to attend. Two former classmates passed away over the years, while others had to withdraw because they live outside of Sardinia or for health reasons. "It was wonderful, but also a little sad," Diana confesses. "Seeing those desks without some of us was impactful. At the same time, I was struck by how much the class spirit remained the same."
After graduation, VA students followed very different paths. Some became doctors, lawyers, notaries, and others embarked on careers in journalism, like Gabriella Saba, now a contributor to Corriere della Sera in Chile and the Il Venerdì supplement of La Repubblica . "Everyone forged their own path," Diana observes. "But that school gave us the foundation."
What also surprised former students was the discovery of a high school that, in many ways, remained almost identical to the one it had in the 1970s. "Dettori has changed less than we imagined," Diana concludes. "The doors are the same, the hallways are the same, even the bathrooms. The only real difference is the blackboards, replaced by screens. Otherwise, it seemed as if those fifty years had never passed."
