Life at Renton High School in the 1940s was a great time.

The best of times, says Mario Tonda of Renton Hill.

“It was a nice experience,” says Tonda, 82. “We had good sports programs, good teachers. … you talk to anybody in those days, it was a great time.”

Tonda and about 200 of his fellow Renton High grads will reminisce about that great time during this Sunday’s annual reunion of The Renton High Old Timers’ Association.

Tonda, a lifetime Renton resident, is chairman of the Old Timers’ Association. He graduated from Renton High in 1944.

This year’s banquet at Renton Holiday Inn will be attended by Renton High grads from the class of 1948 and earlier. Renton High was then Renton Senior High School and the only high school in town. The downtown school served grades 10-12.

The Old Timers’ reunions started for Renton High graduates in 1960 and have continued every year since. Sunday’s reunion is the 49th.

“We always have a full house, about 200 people each time,” Tonda says.

To maintain that full house, a younger class is invited each year.

Some of the Old Timers get together now and then, but the annual banquet is the group’s main event. Planning takes three months.

Evy Nord, 85, has attended six or seven Old Timers’ reunions.

“It’s mainly a social thing. You see people you haven’t seen for years,” she says.

Nord, also a lifetime Rentonian, graduated from Renton High in 1941. She lives in the Highlands.

The class of 1930 will be the oldest Renton High class represented this year. One person from that class and 25 or so students from classes through the 1930s are planning to attend Sunday’s reunion.

“It’s just to kind of reminisce, to see how much we’ve changed and aged,” Tonda says.

Big changes have happened in Renton since Tonda and the Old Timers went to Renton High those 60-some years ago.

Tonda divides much of the changes into two time periods: before and after the start of World War II. Before the war, about 4,000 people lived in Renton, he says.

Then the war started and “there was a big change” as Boeing workers and their families started moving into town.

“Overnight it got to be about 16,000,” Tonda says of Renton’s population.

That population boom filled up Renton High and its new overflow buildings that looked like barracks, Tonda said.

After graduation, Tonda and many of his classmates went directly into the military. He spent two years stationed on Treasure Island in San Francisco.

But before graduation, Tonda and Nord and their classmates had fun. Good, clean, non-mischievous fun.

Fox trots and waltzes at the Spanish Castle dance hall on Saturday nights. Nice, non-alcoholic parties at Lake Wilderness on Sundays.

Life inside Renton High during the 1940s was just as tame as life outside the school.

Nord remembers good teachers and basketball teams. She doesn’t remember any problems.

“Everybody knew each other,” she says. “There were no problems, no drug problems, we didn’t hear about that.”

Those were the days when chewing gum during study hall could land you in serious trouble.

Tonda has similar shiny, happy memories of high school.

“I think we lived in the best of times,” he says. “Everyone I’ve talked to close to our age, they all said that. I think we lived in the best times. But that’s changed. Those days are over.”