Keri Hart used to ride her horse to Redmond High School (RHS) on Mustang Days.

During the rest of the school year, she drove a 1962 Volkswagen six miles from her home to school.

On May 29, Hart — who was part of the first RHS sophomore class in 1964 — returned to the school and helped celebrate its 50th anniversary with fellow graduates and teachers from the old days and current era.

“It was really rural, it was in the middle of nowhere,” Hart remembered about the original high school. “All the fields were new and we even had things like archery in the open fields. We even played golf on the football field — I can remember in PE, we made little divots and then after that they decided we shouldn’t be on the football field.”

Hart’s friend Alicia Joseph (Hohmann) graduated in 1981 and remembers the “cool” guys driving big, lifted-up pickup trucks and a couple students whizzing by in Trans Ams.

“The kids were really friendly. Everybody called us hicks out here — we all wore jeans and flannels,” Joseph said with a laugh. She enjoyed the football games, dances, assemblies and spirit days.

On the music front, she listened to “old-time rock and roll, lots of ZZ Top and stuff like that.”

Joseph’s son, Derek, is a current sophomore at RHS and her two daughters, Kastlie and Samantha, graduated in 2011 and 2013, respectively.

RHS Class of 1975 graduates Terri Fletcher and Mickey Anderson were on hand at the anniversary and strolled the halls and laughed with former City of Redmond parks and recreation director John Couch.

Couch, who worked for the city from 1968-2000, said city officials and RHS students, coaches, teachers and administrators have always had close relationships.

“This is a family to me,” Couch said. “The school would use the park facilities, the city would use the school facilities — there was a nice little love thing going on there for years and years, which still goes on. Hey, this is community.”

Fletcher, who was head coach for girls soccer in 1977-78, remembers students talking a lot about the Vietnam War back in her days on the RHS campus. She said many of her buddies “lucked out” after the government stopped doing the augmented draft, “but a lot of us had brothers and a lot of friends that had to go. And that was kind of a big issue back then.”

On the RHS student-government scene, Fletcher joked that she defeated Anderson for junior class president in 1974.

“It took me a few years, but I got over it,” Anderson said with a laugh.

Anderson enjoyed himself at the anniversary celebration, which included a speech by current RHS Principal Jane Todd, a proclamation reading by Lake Washington School District Superintendent Traci Pierce and a slideshow with photos from past to present.

“It’s fantastic,” Anderson said. “I grew up in Redmond. My mother was a secretary here in 1968 and all my siblings all went to school here. My cousins, we had 20 of us in Redmond.”