Group of friends reunite after 74 years apart: ‘They seem like long-lost family’

LAS VEGAS (FOX5/Gray News) - Keeping a friendship alive after decades apart is no easy task.

However, a group of friends who grew up together in California proved that no matter how much time has passed, their friendship will always stay the same.

Meet Sheila Chamberlain, Janice Hill, Geneva Nettles, Betty Ann Loggins and Peggy Johnson.

The group of five friends reunited in Las Vegas after 74 years.

They shared their school pictures from the eighth grade and revealed that was the last time they were all together, which was the year 1951.

As social media and smartphones have changed the dynamic of how many communicate, this Las Vegas reunion for the group became a reality for the friends who are now spread across the country.

The ladies described their reunion as “emotional.”

“They don’t seem like friends. They seem like long-lost family,” Nettles described.

When asked what stopped them from meeting all these years, the group said they each had their own families. Many of them were married while they were still teens.

“I think some of was were married, some of us weren’t. Husbands working, didn’t want to leave without our husbands, didn’t want to come without them,” Chamberlain said.

However, in the last 74 years, they have each lost their husbands and had to navigate their grief on their own.

“I lost three and I kicked the fourth one out,” Nettles joked.

It was a reminder of how the group always leaned on each other.

“One time, we was playing baseball and a ‘smart aleck’ girl comes up to bat, and Sheila was the catcher and I was out in the center field, and that smart little girl came up and hit her with the bat,” Nettles remembered. “I threw my mitt down and I ran from center field all the way to first base, and I just beat the stuffing out of that girl.”

From having each other’s backs to rebelling, the group was in it together.

“We wore jeans and that was a no-no back in the day. We had to stay after school,” Johnson said.

Then, there was a time when they snuck into a drive-in theater.

“Those were the good days,” Nettles said.

When the ladies were not at school, they said they would walk to the only milkshake shop in town and use a nickel to use the jukebox.

Their favorite song was, “How much is that doggie in the window?”

The ladies flew back to their respective homes after spending five days together and now say they hope to reunite once a year.

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