By the site developer and administrator, Alan Steele, plus about a dozen supportive classmates. We could always use more people who are willing to help support the site financially. If you are willing to chip in $15 per year to help fund the site please shoot me an email at asteele6@verizon.net.

Picking a time of year and a date is always the first order of business when reunion planning begins. Besides consulting tea leaves, we generally rely on past experience and conversations we have had with various classmates. It’s amazing how many conflicts appear when a potential time of year and date is discussed.

We have eliminated from consideration holding a reunion in the winter due to the threat of inclement weather and the resultant travel difficulties, or the spring because of graduations and weddings. The fall usually doesn’t conflict with vacations but does conflict with business conventions for the professionals and sports schedules for the classmates who are avid supporters of their alma maters. The summer is convenient for those who want to combine a visit back to No VA to visit family with the reunion, but conflicts with teachers and even students starting back to school in August and family vacations in July.

 

Obviously, there is no time that works for everyone. We have generally felt that a date at the end of July probably is least conflicting since it falls between family vacations which tend to be earlier in July and the back to school of August. Of course, travel expenses for both airfares and gasoline tend to be higher in the summer and that has to be weighed as well. On the other hand, hotels and party rooms seem to be more available in the summer and hotels may be willing to cut deals.

For the upcoming 40th reunion, we wanted to announce the date far enough in advance that people could mark their calendars and begin to make their plans accordingly.

The biggest hurdle in organizing a class reunion is building the contact database so you know where to send the invitations. It’s not a no-brainer even with the pros involved – although they certainly are more experienced and have better resources than your average reunion committee. I do know that it’s hard enough building a database for a single class. I can only imagine the effort required for 5 classes. You could be talking about trying to locate 4,000 people. If some of the other classes have no organizing committee, the question that begs to be asked is, "Who’s going to find these folks?" 

This is the $64,000 question and opinions as to why this is vary widely. Responses to our 40th reunion survey indicate that some classmates have schedule conflicts, some are deterred by the expense involved with travel, hotel, etc., some are not sufficiently motivated to make the effort and some simply have no interest in a reunion or anything else having to do with high school. It was a long time ago.

A fair number of survey respondents indicated that the prospect of seeing old friends again would provide the greatest motivation to attend a reunion. Since many of these same respondents also indicated that they were uncertain as to whether they would attend the next reunion or not, I can only conclude that they are uncertain as to whether any old friends will be there - presumably because they have not stayed in touch. It would be an unfounded gamble to show up at a reunion having the expectation of seeing someone you haven't been in contact with since high school as your sole motivation for coming.

I’ve come to realize that the factor that makes the biggest difference in the turnout at any given class reunion is the classmates themselves and their willingness to stay connected coupled with an organizational group that’s motivated to try to connect them and keep them connected. In this regard our class is probably somewhere in the middle – not the most motivated and not the most apathetic.