To be young in 1955 was about as good as it gets.

Larry O'Donnell remembers.

Known as "Larry O" as a teenager, O'Donnell, a historian and former school administrator, remembers Everett High School's class of 1955 as a group living in a golden time.

"Our group is often described as 'the luckies.' And we really were because we were a little too young for Korea, way too young for World War II and a little too old for Vietnam," O'Donnell said.

"As a consequence, we just kind of sailed through a period when it was such an innocent world compared to what we live in now. Though it probably wasn't quite as innocent as we thought it was."

William Bolcom also remembers. He can even sing the Everett High School fight song: "E-v-e-r-e-t-t stands for Everett High / I am an Everett man born / An Everett man till I die ... "

That's not surprising. After all, Bolcom is a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and musician.

He was not in the marching band but played all the piano parts in the orchestra and performed at school assemblies.

"High school is a blur for me — my sister tells me I was known as popular," he said.

Back then, Bolcom already was serious with his music studies.

"One day a week, every week during the school year, I'd go to the University of Washington from the age of 11 through junior-high school and high school, taking the bus and going to classes," he said by phone from Ann Arbor, Mich., where he is a professor at the University of Michigan. "I was on the other track. I never planned to stay in Everett."

But school ties are calling Bolcom back. He plans to return to Everett for his 50-year class reunion this week.

Four days of reminiscing will start tonight with a cruise in Port Gardner Bay and include a dinner at the Everett Events Center, a tour of Everett High School, an antique-car show in front of the school, a group photo and the opening of a class time capsule.

The public is invited to a benefit concert by Bolcom and his wife, soprano Joan Morris, at 8 p.m. Friday at the Everett Civic Auditorium. The program, which they've performed around the world, features the music of Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin and Eubie Blake. Bolcom will play original compositions on piano, too.

All proceeds will go toward student scholarships. According to O'Donnell, the chairman of the reunion committee, the Everett High School Class of '55 Assistance and Scholarship Endowment stands at more than $50,000.

Everett High School, a graceful building that went up in 1910 during Everett's boom era as a mill town, was the only high school in the city for decades. It was a source of community pride and, with classes of up to 500 students, generated many achievers, both in sports and other fields.

The class of 1955 included award-winning journalists Bill Prochnau, formerly of The Washington Post, and Tom Tiede, the author of "Self-Help Nation" and books about Vietnam, and a co-winner of the 1965 Ernie Pyle Memorial Award.

O'Donnell and his younger brother, Jack, also a historian and author, stayed in the Puget Sound area, got degrees from area universities and pursued careers in public education.

With inspirational teachers, including music director Marguerite Snavely — "Snave" to generations of students — Bolcom bloomed.

After graduation, during his three years at the University of Washington, Bolcom worked at a hotel. He also got jobs playing piano, everywhere from college dances to burlesque houses. Wherever he played Saturday nights, on Sundays he'd be back in Everett, playing morning Mass at Trinity Episcopal Church.

"I'd be playing for strippers on Saturday, church on Sunday," he said.

Bolcom went on to study with French composer Darius Milhaud at Mills College in California and later studied at the Paris Conservatoire. He eventually got a doctorate of musical arts at Stanford University and went back to Paris on a Guggenheim fellowship.

His studies with such poets as Theodore Roethke and friendship with Donald Hall and other poets have influenced his career of symphonic writing, opera composition and piano works. He won a Pulitzer Prize in music in 1988 for his "12 New Etudes for Piano."

Looking back, Bolcom said: "I knew I was going to be composing. It all makes sense in retrospect. But you don't know while you're in the process of improvising your life."

Diane Wright: 425-745-7815 or dwright@seattletimes.com