MATTAPOISETT — Every summer, after Tri-Town seventh-graders finish up their school year and start preparing for junior high, one event brings them all together: Survival.

In June, the rising eighth grade class of Old Rochester Regional High School is rounded up onto buses and driven to Northfield, where they spend one week living in the woods with their classmates.

The most recent Survival, which took place in June of this year, marked the 50th rendition of the outing.

On Saturday, Aug. 17, survivors from the year 1973 and on were invited to Ned’s Point Lighthouse for a gathering to celebrate 50 years of survival.

Melanie Lean, co-director of the Survival program, said the event is for “everyone that has ever been on Survival to talk about their shared experience and see people they haven’t seen over the years.”

Lean said it was important to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the event because “not many things last for this long.”

Pictures taken during Survival from past years were put on display for attendees to look at and reflect on.

Many people in attendance are very fond of their memories from Survival, but perhaps none more than Kevin Thompson, who has the Survival logo tattooed on his leg.

Thompson attended Survival as a student in the late 1980s and as a chaperone every year since. 

He said he loves the event because it allows kids to escape from their personal lives and go somewhere where “nothing else matters.”

Thompson said lifelong friendships are born at Survival each and every year.

“At survival everyone is doing the same thing,” said Thompson. “It’s hard — kids struggle and they succeed. It makes them realize they can do more than they thought.”

Also in attendance at the reunion was James Hubbard, one of the teachers who had a role in starting the event that has turned into a tradition.

In the earliest years of Survival, the class of students would stay in the woods of Rochester. A few years in, the Fields family of Mattapoisett said that their land in Northfield could be used, and it has ever since, according to Lean.

Hubbard said in the first few years of Survival, kids and chaperones would eat wild strawberries and other edible treats they could find in the woods. Things are a little different nowadays.

He added that Survival in its earliest form consisted of many obstacle courses and other activities.

“It’s morphed into pushing kids to do something that is really challenging,” said Lean. “It helps kids realize they can accomplish something difficult.”

T-shirts commemorating the 50th anniversary of the event can be purchased at https://bit.ly/survival50yearshirt.