Latin School Class of 1980 title here

The Class of 1980

Reunions:
The 5th Reunion
The 10th Reunion
The 15th Reunion
The 20th Reunion
The 25th Reunion!
The 30th Reunion!
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Last updated: May 11, 2010.

Notes for the next reunion:

The Reunion Committee:

  • Start contacting/calling the alumnae a few months in advance. I called a few people and many of the phone numbers were wrong or obsolete. Likewise with the email addresses. You need more time to track people down.
  • Have several people call the list. That just reinforces the idea that more than one person is excited about the event.
  • "You made us feel very welcome and that was important because we were a little apprehensive about coming at first." *That* is a very important job of the reunion committee that no one ever talked about. We were the face of the reunion, even if the Association did all the work. This hasn't been an issue, but I think we need to consider this when calling up people and trying to get them to attend. The committee's job doesn't end, even when the reunion's over and everyone's gone home.

Everyone in the class:

  • Some people go to reunion hoping to see someone they know. Help them achieve that by getting them to convince other people to go. You can guarantee that you'll see people you'll know if you choose to call people you know and get them to go too.
  • Let me tell you what *I* got out of these reunions. Certainly there were a lot of people I wanted to see and many of *those* people didn't/haven't gone to reunion. The best thing about our reunions is that I made *new* friends. I didn't talk to about 90% of our class when I attended Latin because I was too shy to do that, particularly with the girls.
  • Think about it: At the 25th reunion, everyone was in their 40's. This is the time to be thinking about whether or not you're going to be able to find your friends around at the next reunion. We've already lost several members of our class; it isn't going to get better. We lost Howie Magier right after the 20th; he didn't go to the 20th so we never saw him again. We lost Terri Alduino before the 25th. Don't be thinking that it's too inconvenient to attend a particular reunion and that you'll see everyone at the next one. It might not happen.

Alumnae Association:

  • Mr. Pratt had talked to Elaine Edwards and myself about how he had taught at the school for 30 years and had not gotten invited to any reunions (until our 25th). The Alumnae Association might want to make suggestions for other classes and reunions to consider inviting past teachers before we lose them.
  • Make sure the word "REUNION" is printed on the front of the envelopes with the invitations. Currently the invitations are sent out in the same envelopes as the money requests so they might not get the attention they deserve. Some people even lost their invitations and were only reminded about it because I called them. Maybe purple envelopes?

Benson's Commentary from the 30th Reunion:

There were probably several reasons some of us didn't go.

  1. We didn't get our own room where we could hang out with our classmates as we did with the 20th and 25th Anniversary. The event was shared with the rest of the school in favor of the 375th event.
  2. Some of us are local and have been attending the mini-reunions in the area. We hold them every couple of months so the urgency to attend the 30th was not as great.
  3. Afterwards, I realized that an important piece was missing: there was no enthusiastic champion urging our classmates to attend. For the 25th, I was at the BLSA offices calling our classmates and trying to get them to show up. We didn't have that this time. The school probably figured that the big event was enough to attract attendees. I think that was a mistake. It would have been good if there was one classmate who had a list of attendees and could use that to encourage others to attend. See the notes above.
In hindsight, we should have all attended this event. Several classmates flew in from elsewhere to be here and we should have been with them. Even more important, some of us might not be around for the 35th.