Barbie Ryan

Just saw this in the newsjournal this morning.

Barbie Ryan passed away on Saturday the 23, the day of the reunion. I don’t know the cause of death.
Beth and I had spoken with her about a month earlier. She had called asking about the reunion particulars and I spent about 45 minutes on the phone with her. She was dealing with the emotional weight of a divorce on top of some poor health issues.   In the last year she had spent several weeks (4?) in the hospital in a coma. And although she really wanted to come to the reunion, she didn’t feel healthy enough to make it.

We’ll miss her.

Reflections on the 35th

What a thrill! We had hoped for a good turnout and that folks would enjoy themselves, but both events exceeded our expectations. For those of you who may not have attended for fear of not having anyone to talk to, let me be the first to say that your worries are without merit. I think every classmate who attended would tell you that it didn’t matter what ‘group’ or ‘clique’ you may have been part of in high school, at both the party and the picnic there were no boundaries. It really was terrific. I think Kathy Lens said it best when she said something to the effect that whether or not we realize it, these classmates are part of our extended family, and who we are today is in large part a product of the relationships that we had throughout our school years, and particularly high school. For me, personally, it was an opportunity to reconnect with classmates who go back as far as my girl scout troop. On behalf of Beth, Roger, Marc and myself…a big thanks to all of you who made the trip and/or had the courage to attend and make the weekend a success. It was magical! To those of you who couldn’t make it, we hope what you hear about this year’s event will be enough to help you make a different choice when the next one rolls around!

Moving Forward

I hope everyone had a great time. I sure did.

I had spoken privately to several individuals about the site over the last couple of days and 2 things have emerged on the class wish list.

  1. A class directory. Classmates.com has this already, but frankly there’s a few of us that despise that site. Plus for classmates.com to be useful, you need to pay for it.On the other hand, I don’t want to dump everyone’s contact info on the web for just anyone to grab.

    So in the next week or month or so I will migrate everything we collected to the site and put it behind a password protected screen. I did ask on the sign up, and will honor anyone’s request, if they’d like their information to be left out of the information display. I figure I’ll show your name, city and state, and your personal stalkers will just have to google you to end up at your front door. On the other hand, the reunion committee needs your current updated info to make this job really really easy next time.

    Leila Frick also asked that I add an option to indicate a classmate’s interests so it might be possible to find other classmates that are golfers, skiers or maybe even cancer survivors.

  2. A photo gallery. (I should have this soon. Just got a ton of work at the office this particular week.) I haven’t decided on a photo gallery software package. I’d like to find one that would allow anyone to upload their shots.As a side note, I use Flickr.com for my personal photography (Basically my cats and dogs). There’s an entire world of social photosharing sites out that I was tempted to make a social group and let people upload there. I’d be curious to hear people’s thoughts on just doing it that way.

Finally, these posts on the mtp site have the option to add comments. You need to register and I do need to moderate the comment, to keep the “comment” spam down. And if anyone’s curious about that, I’ll send you a sample of the nonsense that can fill an un-moderated form on the web. You’ll see on this post mary humanick has already added a comment.

Lost & Found.

I lost my voice… On the other hand did anyone lose these? Left at the sign in desk.

sunglasses
Let me know and I’ll get them to you.

Oh, looks like the next one (according to comments I’ve heard) will be homecoming weekend 2013.

I really don’t know what the date will be, but that’s a start.
Keep in touch!

Rog

We’re in the 80’s

We’ve reserved space for 85 heads at the party.

Weather will be perfect all weekend.
(Hope our Florida friends can make it out of the storm.)

See you all Saturday!
If you know someone that wants to come, they can still pay at the door. Please sign up online so we have your contact information.

Rog, Beth & Carol

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