by Pearl Washington
Special to the Tri-State Defender

When former Frayser High School classmates Derrick and LaShaundra Rosenthal tried to organize a 10-year class reunion, the response wasn’t exactly overwhelming.

(from left) Ken Hamlin, Rodney McAtee and Derrick Rosenthall at the Memphis Marriott downtown celebrating at the Frayser High Class of 1999 Reunion. (Courtesy photos)

Dallas Cowboys safety and Frayser High School graduate Ken Hamlin enjoying a class reunion moment with Lashaundra Wilson-Rosenthall

“We started out with the reunion costing $99 per person, that covered everything,” said LaShaundra Rosenthal. “But the deadline came and went, and well, actually, only five or six people had paid.”

Then, in a conversation Derrick Rosenthal was having with his best friend, Ken Hamlin, now a safety for the Dallas Cowboys, Hamlin asked how plans for their reunion were going. When Rosenthal explained that funds weren’t forthcoming, Hamlin did what safeties do: he acted as the last line of defense and offered to pay for the entire thing.

Before Hamlin was drafted by the Seattle Seahawks in the second round of the 2003 NFL draft and earned a pro-bowl selection with the Dallas Cowboys in 2007, he was first a 1999 graduate of Frayser High School. And he was in the Frayser Library when he signed his National Letter of Intent to play for Arkansas.

“Ken told Derrick to brainstorm the reunion plans with Celeste (Butler-Castillo) since she was the class president and Ken was vice-president, and to let him know the cost and he would handle it,” said LaShaundra Rosenthal.

And he did.  

So there was the Frayser High Class of 1999, meeting and greeting at Vibes nightclub last Friday night; picnicking with their families and classmates at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Riverside Park on Saturday afternoon; and dressing up for the banquet at the Marriott Hotel downtown on Saturday night, where of course the DJ played Prince’s “Party Like It’s 1999.”

They posed for pictures, lots of pictures; nearly 50 of the 80 students who had marched across the stage a decade ago. Classmates who had traveled back to Memphis from Nashville, Atlanta, and Houston, and the hometown-guy-made-good, posing with the rest of his classmates, celebrating that age-old tradition: the high school reunion.

Touchdown.