HOME How Did This 40th Reunion of Class of 1966 Happen to Become So Wonderful?
Jim Conroy, who started this harebrained scheme for a reunion, but who did zilch after the beginning, wants everyone to know who the real "Heroes," "Heavy lifters," and "True Believers" were that made this thing happen. So here's the history:
October 2005
Conroy signed up on Classmates.com as WJ66 reunion coordinator - by
mistake. (And I'm not joking - I just wanted to say I was interested, but the
software conned me into being the Coordinator simply because I was the first to
express interest in having one!)
November 2, 2005
Virginia (Wolfe) Cothran expressed interest in helping set up a reunion, sent
via Classmates - but lives in Minnesota
November 7, 2005
Binnie (Leipsig) Baumgartner Nov 7 interest via Classmates
December 5, 2005
Tony Records emails Conroy with offer to help
December 2005 Norris
Hillery willing to help note on Classmates
January 2006 Conroy
sent note to past organizers Dunn and others for advice on how to do this insane
thing, found that it's pretty much done ad hoc
January 8, 2006 Nat Sisco sent
Classmates message offering help with a reunion, lives locally, suggested a VFW
post, which would be free
January 10, 2006
Conroy logged onto the WJHS website, found out it had a list of all members of
the class of 1966, and about 70 of them had email addresses
January 31, 2006
Kathy Dunn wrote email with info about "how to" and that Alice Mehlert
was instrumental in the 20th
February 2, 2006
Long phone call Conroy & Hillery about making a reunion happen
February 3, 2006
Conroy decides to try to do something outside of Classmates.com, so that we
won't all have to pay $ to join Classmates.com. They won't even let folks
exchange email addresses for fear that they'll lose subscribers - BAH! Conroy
directs his vast corporate staff to begin compiling lists of WJ66 email
addresses. (Vast corporate staff: A part time guy named Charlie who's a friend
of his son. He and Conroy put in about 80 hours total to try to find folks and
verify email addresses.)
May 9, 2006 Andrea
Price writes to express interest and offer of help
Feb to May
Nothing much happens, interest seems restricted to about 7 people
May 30, 2006 Norris
Hillery comes up with the Bio concept (Interesting, since he never had a class
in Biology and is afraid of bugs)
June 1, 2006 Conroy
finishes compiling email addresses from Classmates.com, from the WJ website, and
from the 25th reunion CD
June 3, 2006 Conroy
sends email to all those addresses about a reunion, with the idea, and a
WebSurvey address to vote on date and venue, and a Yahoo Groups listserv
invitation so we can all communicate and make the thing snowball
June 3, 2006 Tom
Meleney immediately responds that he had tried to generate interest in a reunion
via Classmates.com a few months ago, and not much happened, but he's fired up
for one
June 7, 2006 Jill
(Blomquist) Filipczyk writes, is interested, and offers advice about how
difficult these things are, and how much work they require, and that she has
just finished coordinating her daughter's wedding and is exhausted from the
whole thing.....(Heh Heh)
June 8, 2006 Conroy
emails the WJ website for advice, including using the school as the location.
(No response was ever received from the Webmaster or anyone else.)
June to July, 2006
Nobody gives a darn - dead air
July 20, 2006 Conroy and
Bigelow agree by phone that this is not going to happen, so little interest, we
could only get maybe 20 or 30 folks to come...
July 21, 2006 Jill (Blomquist)
Filipczyk writes to Norris Hillery with a date and a location proposal
(about the reunion, of course)!!!!
July 21, 2006, instantaneous
Everyone involved says, "Hey! This is a concrete idea! I'm in!"
July 27, 2006 Bios begin
seeping in
July 14, 2006 General
Hillery gives out "finding" assignments to volunteers - to find and
invite people from the WJ66 25th Reunion book for whom email
addresses weren't given (Tom Meleney (D-G), Cleve Bigelow (N-R), Virginia (Ginny)Wolfe
(S-Z), Norris Hillery (H-M), Nate Sisco (A-C) ......this was a fruitless
disaster and helped find maybe 10 classmates when we were seeking 550 on the
missing list
July 28, 2006 Brian F.
begins to try to crack the 25th Reunion CD and get all the emails at
once, contacts company, as does Cleve Bigelow, and they protect their $ turf,
refusing to assist. So the next steps of the "finding" work have to be
taken one classmate at a time.
July 31, 2006 Jill (Blomquist)
Filipczyk creates an announcement flyer.
August 2, 2006 Keith Bonn
starts web searching using ANYWHO. This detective work, combined with prior
efforts, turns out to be incredibly valuable. Tom uses zabasearch.com and
whitepages.com successfully
August, 2006 Around this
time, several people are working on updating the list of classmates Excel file
Conroy originally put together, and things get a bit confusing - but folks
are being
found.
August 4, 2006 Jill is close to
finalizing plans with Union Jack Pub
August 5, 2006 Madman Meleney
begins serious efforts to locate more 66 folks by phone, very difficult, little
success
After that
Snowball! Friends begin calling people they've kept in touch with, bios are
pouring in,
Jill and
Norris and
Tom and
Keith and
later on Pat Wilson
are doing huge amounts of planning and work, Ginny
and others are still finding classmates one at a time, Tom Meleney made up call
sheets of about 10 names, addresses and phone numbers for others to call:
Cleveland, Ginny, Earl, Arlene, Marilyn Botkiss,
Pat Zimmerman, and Patti Wilson made
these calls. Steve Van Sande
even put his 2 cents worth in saying Tom Haselton might know where Noel is). Tom
blasted emails to classmates.com folks with very little replies (including
Noel Gale
ignored him because she did not want to spend the $25 to rejoin classmates.com
then Tom Haselton
gave up her address from his Mom's Christmas Card list and she was found and
agreed to attend during the last week). Tom
Meleney's top 27 Hit List of Missing
Classmates turned up Jacque Guinan
who knew where Cindi Schmick
was plus Jack Lever, Stuart Sheldon and Faye Griffin. Conroy does
absolutely zero and is actually kinda proud of it. Missing (Lost) List finally
reduced to about 300.
It all turned out to look like the classic
"exponential growth curve" or "S-shaped curve" that we all
failed to understand in math class. It started slow, did nothing much for a
while, then lit on fire really fast, and leveled off just days before the event
itself.
The list of the people to whom we owe our gratitude has to start with Norris Hillery, Jill (Blomquist) Filipczyk and Tom Meleney. Norris, in particular, never ceased his daily attention to the effort. These three classmates really took the leadership with zest and massive amounts of time/commitment. I personally believe the courage of Jill (Blomquist) Filipczyk in making a concrete suggestion (date and venue) was the single thing that broke the logjam. Without her action (and HUGE follow-up), this wouldn't have happened. Tom Meleney was working on this almost from the start, and created the WJ66 Website. He also did most of the crucial searching and recruiting, and, right at the end, was completely central in the nametags, hospitality suite at the American Inn, and pure friendly leadership. Keith Bonn put in stunning quantities of effort to find all of us, and without his work, the thing wouldn't have been half the size it was. Again, right at the end, it was Pat Wilson who, created the "Book of Biographies," organized all the details of the many hospitality suite events and provided great support wherever needed.
Setting up the photo buttons and arranging them on the table at the entrance was the work of Ginny Wolfe and Erika Hillery. Jane Luckom volunteered to put together a contact spreadsheet of ways to contact classmates during their weekend at the reunion and will follow-up with a master contact list. Ginny Wolfe got stuck collecting money from the walk-ups and Norris' spouse Erika manned the raffle counter all night.
At the event itself, Norris again showed his mettle by working the stage and the microphone in a completely impossible situation, where everyone was having SO much fun just seeing one another that we were impossible to gather together for planned events (Herding cats).....actually, it was pretty funny, too....but Norris gave his all to the effort without actually machine gunning the entire bunch of us unruly classmates. I must commend him for his sturdy and undaunted leadership.
In my favorite book from my teen years, Catch 22, which I read 6 times in high school, Yossarian suggested building an Officers Club at their airbase. Then he didn't pound a single nail to help build the thing. Nonetheless, he was overwhelmingly proud of the new Club. As Joseph Heller wrote it, his pride was closely linked to his not lifting a finger in actually making it happen. I thought that was very funny at the time. Now, I think it's even funnier - and I understand it better.
Thank you to the real Heroes, the True Believers, the Heavy Lifters who made this happen.
And I say with no B.S. that it was one of the best and most memorable weekends of my life.
Well done, all!
Jim "Yossarian" Conroy