DEPOSIT GOAL MET

 Some months ago, against better judgement, I joined the Reunion Committee for Newtown High School (Elmhurst, Queens NY) Class of 1985's 40th Reunion.  I was on the committee back when we had the Silver Reunion (25 years).  I cannot remember why it was painful, but it was.  Lots of work, monthly (?) meetings, hunting people down in many social media platforms, including Plaxo and Friendster - who remember those!?  Facebook was somewhat new for me at the time.  This time around, we already have a good base of interested people, but what I found out recently is fifteen years after the other reunion, many people are no longer active on Facebook, or left the platform altogether.  I cannot blame them.

Proceeded we did, admission price was set and a deadline for collecting x dollars to hand over to the hotel to secure the event space.  I was somewhat worried.  We live in interesting times, a bizarro world with events making writers at the satirical website The Onion scratch their heads.  Inflation, bird flu, uncertain economic future, will people plunk down x dollars to see a bunch of people from high school?  But plunk they did and we now have enough money to cover the deposit.  Whew!  I was worried for a while we won't make it and have to refund the money and lose some more money because the billing service we use charge x percent for every transaction.  Maybe we'll hemorrhage our fund because of the service charges and have to use our own money to cover the refund.  I know of at least one horror story of someone trying to do a reunion and lost $1000s.  OK, not this time for Newtown Class of 1985, whew!

High School Reunion - Friend Finder

In the old days, I imagine, looking for high school friends so many years after graduation means getting together physically to pore over the yearbook and call people one after another.  Perhaps two people would open their own yearbook and call each other then go over the names and assign them accordingly.  Depending on how long back you go, there may be no telephones to use and you would send out copies of a form letter to the last address known for a person.  Clacking away on typewriters, running the letter through photocopier, fill out the blank after "Dear", sign the letter then fold it, stuff it into the envelope, and address the envelope.  Finally, lick the stamp and affix it then lick the envelope to seal it.  What fun!

My recent search for high school friends didn't happen like that at all.  We were well into the Information Age, with the Information Superhighway running through our houses, at high speed no less.  We didn't have to get together physically.  One of us was on the west side of the U.S. and three were in New York City, although different parts of the city and rarely see each other, at least for me.  We got on CONFERENCE calls, not one-to-one calls like the days of yore, to discuss things to do and progresses.  We actually sent out a few paper letters and they didn't do much good.

One thing we had in common with the old-fashioned approach was the yearbook.  Regardless of how the process of finding friends is done, it has to start with the yearbook.  However, we had a "copy" of the yearbook in the form of a Google Doc, a spreadsheet, to be exact.  It took some time to type in all the names but it was worthwhile.  We could sort the list by last name or by first name, or later as we got more info about the students, by other columns, like whether they were on Facebook or indicated they were interested in the reunion.  Having all the student names in digital form allowed us to also use the search function to find the names.  After 25 years, some of us may remember only the first name of a classmate.  By searching for just that first name and coming across all the last names that go with the found first name, perhaps something in our mind would be jolted to come forward.

Besides the yearbook, we also had access to the commencement roster.  For some reason, the roster had few or no typos at all so it was a good source to fall back onto.  After typing in the names from the yearbook, I also added the names from the roster.  An additional bonus with the roster was many of the names had middle initials.  If you have to find someone whose first name and last name are common, the middle initial makes a big difference.  Yet one other usefulness with the commencement roster is that it may have names of people who somehow were not in the yearbook.  Maybe someone transferred into your school after the yearbook photos were taken.

Whether you plan to do the work of finding high school friends with your committee made up of classmates or use professional search service, the yearbook, in digital form (read: searchable), plus the commencement roster if possible, will get you to a great start.  It is good to have a pack rat on the committee who can type at decent speed.

How To Run A Successful High School Reunion

Five hours, two years, a quarter of a century.  Amazing as it sounds, they all went by in a flash.  Just a few days, I had my high school reunion, a Silver (25 years) Reunion as a matter of fact.  It took about two years of planning and lasted five hours.  I was part of the Reunion Committee and based on the feedback it was a great success.  Partly for me to look back some day on the event and what led up to it, partly for anyone wishing to organize a high school reunion, here are the process on how to run a successful high school reunion.

You need a committee.  It is a lot of work for any one person.  We were lucky to have people who good at dealing with the various vendors (catering hall, photographer, DJ), taking notes during meetings and sending them out, finding old friends or at least reaching out strangers with the same last names and first names in hope they are your old friends, balancing the checkbook, make polls, keep lists of attendees, and taking care of many other tasks required of the committee.  Not only we put in the work, we also put some some money to get things going.  After all, vendors mostly require deposits.

You need a place to hold the event.  Not one who cares about dancing and drinking, I would have suggested some quiet place to reminisce the past, like a library of sort.  Luckily, we decided the event to be held in New York City so there were many choices to choose from.  We settled upon the Astoria World Manor and pricey as it may be, it was a great choice.  Great location, not too far from the two airports in Queens and near a major highway, roomy hall, great parking, good service, and fancy décor.  Of course, depending on the size of your party, you need to find something that fits.  Whatever, you cannot go wrong if you have dancing and drinking.

You need lots of participants!  According to my yearbook, there were over 800 students, a large population.  It was 2008 so naturally we went mostly with Facebook (FB) to locate those 800+ people.  One nice thing with FB is that when opening up an account, people get to indicate their high schools and such.  The info is then collected in one place, sorted by graduation year, ready for others to pore over.  We found many people this way but it helped also to have our own high school group.  We also had premium accounts with Classmates.com and MyLife.com and they helped somewhat.  Don't forget the personal connections.  Many people kept in touch with their own small circle of friends over the years.  If you are lucky enough to connect with an individual from these circles, you have a good chance of locating even more.  Don't be surprised or discouraged if someone responds coldly upon being found.  Twenty five years is a long period of time, people change, or maybe no longer care about certain aspect of their past.  Or maybe they are too tight with their privacy and freaked out when they somehow got found.  Just move on to the other grads.

I got pretty good at finding people, both through free services on the web or premium accounts so perhaps I can delve into that area in greater details.  The process may not be earth-shattering amazing and probably can be found out there in the library or on the web, but it's something that worked for me.

Happy Organizing!

Calling All Newtown '85 Grads!

I finally found another use for Facebook other than playing word games and sending "things" back and forth to people. High school reunion!

I've gotten involved in planning for a reunion for my high school class of 1985. If you graduated from Newtown High School in Elmhurst, Queens, New York, in 1985, do check out

http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=679001334&k=5VEU4Y5RVVZM51GIQD2XT4

Note that this is not the same Newtown H.S. somewhere in Connecticut.

The reunion is set for 2010 but it is not that far away. So far we have only 45 members which I am sure is not much compared to all those that graduated that year. Let's bump that number all the way up! Someone already scanned in a bunch of photos and uploaded them. The reaction so far has been positive. It's nice to see how people change over the years and yet some features stay the same. Above is my own photo from the yearbook. Why the big glasses? To better see you, my dear child!