Bob Dylan Was Reportedly Pushed Out of His High School Reunion by Unwelcoming Classmates
Bob Dylan is likely the most famous graduate of Hibbing High School. He graduated in the class of 1959 and swiftly left his hometown for New York City. He’s spoken about how happy he was to leave Minnesota, but he did return for his ten-year high school reunion. Despite his level of success at that point, not all of his former classmates were happy to see him. He reportedly left early after a conversation with some former students.
Bob Dylan went to high school in Minnesota
Dylan grew up in Hibbing, Minnesota, home to the world’s largest iron ore mine. He described his hometown in his book Chronicles: Volume One.
“The world I grew up in was a little different, a little more modernized [than my parents’], but still mostly gravel roads, marshlands, hills of ice, steep skylines of trees on the outskirts of town, thick forests, pristine lakes large and small, iron mine pits, trains and one-lane highways,” he wrote. “Winters, ten below with a twenty below wind-chill factor were common, thawing spring and hot, steamy summers — penetrating sun and balmy weather where temperatures rose over one hundred degrees. Summers were filled with mosquitoes that could bite through your boots — winters with blizzards that could freeze a man dead. There were glorious autumns as well.”
When he left Hibbing behind in 1960, Dylan looked back on it with derision.
“When I left there, man,” he told an interviewer in 1965, per The Telegraph, “I knew one thing: I had to get out of there and not come back.”
Bob Dylan abruptly left his high school reunion after a chilly reception from some classmates
Dylan did not look back on his hometown warmly, and not everyone who lived there was impressed by his success.
“People in this town, they weren’t real receptive to him,” Mick Dwyer, one of Dylan’s former classmates, said. “I think they were jealous of him, or didn’t think he was talented enough. That’s why he didn’t come back, because he was not well received.”
Still, somewhat surprisingly, Dylan returned to Hibbing for his high school reunion in 1969.
“It was very different,” former classmate Sharon Kepler said. “My memory of that is of Bob standing in one corner and of people going up and shaking his hand. I didn’t like that … I would have been happier if he had just been able to sit down and be one of our classmates.”
Some of his classmates fondly remember meeting Dylan’s first wife, Sara, or being kissed on the cheek by the musician. Still, some of the attendees were not happy to see them. The Telegraph reported that “some men at the gathering didn’t approve of Bob’s presence, and words were apparently exchanged.” Following this conversation, Dylan and Sara quickly left.
His hometown has since warmed to him
Since 1969, Hibbing has embraced its legacy as Dylan’s hometown a bit more. A local restaurant called Zimmy’s — a nod to Dylan’s original last name, Zimmerman — is decorated with Dylan memorabilia. Some of his classmates have also sold their yearbooks, which are particularly valuable if Dylan signed them.
“I’m one of those who would wish him well,” Dwyer said. “I’m going to be running the front table at the reunion, checking people in … I was hoping he’d come in and I’d see him when he came by the table. He’s a nice kid….”
