Robin Hodgskin and Anne Stack, Fayetteville-Manlius High School Class of ‘72, put their own spin on arriving in style this week.

To celebrate their 40th high school reunion, Hodgskin and Stack decided to bike along the Erie Canal from Buffalo to Albany with their husbands Art Bell and Tim Dunnbier.

The idea came from Hodgskin’s husband, Art, who’d seen signs for the Erie Canalway Trail while driving on the thruway during trips from their home in Yarmouth, Maine, to see family in Syracuse.

“All I see is signs for the Erie Canal, so I thought we’d get it up close and personal,” Bell said.

And the result?

“It was awesome,” he said. “The thing is, if you listen to them talk about when they grew up 40 years ago around here, the Erie Canal, nobody thought anything about it … And now the state has turned it into this unbelievable recreational thing, and it’s very cool.”

They arrived in Fayetteville at around 4 p.m. Tuesday, en route to Albany, after starting from Niagara Falls on Saturday. They had biked 60 miles that day after starting the morning in Seneca Falls.

With 220 miles under their belts, they had over 150 to go before attending this weekend’s reunion events. Hodgskin and Stack spoke to the Eagle Bulletin from the heart of the village, the small pocket park where Genesee Street, Salt Springs Road and South Manlius Street meet.

Hodgskin said coming into Fayetteville was “unbelievable. We loved climbing that hill and seeing that village of Fayetteville. I saw my old doctor’s office – Dr. Golden.”

Stack, of Concord, Mass., couldn’t have felt more at home when she saw the veterinary office, nestled under Route 5 on Mill Street, started by her father as Stack Animal Hospital in the late 1960s.

Both were thrilled to see Friendly’s still at the corner of Genesee and South Manlius streets. The restaurant was built when they were in high school and quickly became “the hot spot,” Hodgskin said.

“A lot of it has not changed in a really wonderful way,” she said. “I love looking over here at Friendly’s — I feel like I never left.”

Hodgskin is now a Senior Vice President at financial firm Morgan Stanley Smith Barney. She has three kids ages 19, 22 and 25. Stack is clinical chief of emergency medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital and has a 16-year-old daughter.

Friends for life

Hodgskin and Stack didn’t need a reunion to be reunited with each other.

“We’ve maintained friendship since we first knew each other, which was seventh grade,” Stack said.

“We had a very tight-knit group of friends,” she added. “We were very involved in sports and theater and music … we were kind of ‘good kids.’”

They were both cheerleaders — it was the one way they could be involved with school sports, since Title IX didn’t go into effect until after they graduated.

“It was before Title Nine so there was no female athletics, sadly,” Stack said.

The two can’t wait to see their classmates and old friends at the reunion, which is being coordinated by Jim and Ann (Fitch) Resig. First up is an ice breaker night at the Glen Loch Inn in Jamesville from 7 to 10 p.m. Friday, followed by golf at Green Lakes State Park in Fayetteville at 8:30 a.m. Saturday, self-guided tours of the high school on Saturday and a dinner at the Craftsman Inn in Fayetteville, and a barbecue at Mill Run Park in Manlius from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday.

“We’ve stayed in touch with lots of friends and can’t wait to see everybody,” Hodgkin said.

“Which is why we’re coming back,” Stack said.

Ned Campbell can be reached at [email protected].