Informative Articles on Finding Classmates®

How to Find Classmates®

-Doug Woods

The entire point of a class reunion is to reunite, and you cannot do that without your classmates. To guarantee you find as many folks as practical before the class reunion, start locating classmates early, maybe even a year before the event. This could also help spread the word a class reunion is being planned.

You want to make a master list of everybody you are making an attempt to find. Make a list of classmates' names using the annual from your senior year. Another good reference, if you have a copy, is your school graduation program, which should contain a list of everybody who graduated with you.

If you can't find either an annual or a program, contact your high school to see whether the registrar or college secretary can supply you with a list of your classmates. Start a spreadsheet so that you can keep all of the info you find on people in one place. You can also use it later as a database for class reunion promotional mailings. Your spreadsheet might include each classmate's: last name, original name, first name, postal address, telephone number and email address. It is also a sensible idea to have a notes section for each classmate in which you can enter leads or tips you want to chase up on. After you enter all of your classmates' names in your spreadsheet, fill in the contact info for the people with whom you have stayed in contact.

In this age of email, it's simpler to stay in touch with old pals, so start by getting in touch with any classmates in your email address notebook to ask them for their current contact info.

Here is an engaging statistics fact : Seventy percent or more of your school classmates still reside in your school's home state. So they could be right under your nose!

Here are some ideas for finding old classmates:

• Get the records of any previous reunion planners
• Check for classmates registered on public alumni sites
• Check with your college or alumni organization and on their sites
• Post your missing classmate names on your internet site and college or alumni site
• Ask your faculty or alumni organization to post a link to your class internet site in case classmates visit these sites.
• Check online state telephone books such as: Switchboard.com, Anywho.com, or Whitepages.com - See who is living at their last known address by employing the 'reverse address' feature at Whitepages.com. Fill in the address and get the prevailing telephone number for that address. Perhaps they know your classmate's location or location of other family members.
• Check other graduating class internet sites for your school for possible relatives of a missing classmate
• Try entering names of school classmates on main search engines like Google or Yahoo - The following paid search services might provide info about missing classmates: USSearch.com or People-finders.com.
• Facebook and MySpace can be excellent resources for finding classmates
• Check the Social Security Death Index for deceased classmates at deathindexes.com/ssdi.html
• Check online Obituaries for deceased classmates
• 'Pay for' search services

Do not forget your low-tech options to find classmates:

• Check the telephone book for the city in which your high school is found. You might find missing classmates listed there. If not, see if you can find the names of their family who might be in a position to point you to the people you're looking for.
• Organize a phone-a-thon by making contact with all found classmates and ask if they understand how to reach other high school classmates.
• Often overlooked by reunion committees is the fact that classmates may actually be trying to find you. Publicize your reunion info in local and area papers, radio stations and online public websites.
• Your high school might be in a position to supply you with an inventory of classmates' last known ( likely their parents' ) addresses.
• When you do find classmates, ask them for the contact info of other classmates they have stayed in contact with. If they do not have precise contact info, they may have other tips that might point you to the people you're looking for (who they married, last town they were living in, for example ).
• If you continue to have lost classmates by the time you are prepared to send out your first promotional email or mailing about your class reunion, include an inventory of those classmates in the email or mailing. Ask the classmates you have found for leads or tips on finding the missing members.

To locate married women classmates, use what you already know about the female's age, hometown, middle initials, and their maiden name to then find more documents to retain more information about that classmate. Find the earliest marriage certificate for a woman to help obtain the most recent personal information on their whereabouts. When searching, keep in mind that divorced women continue using their married name being of children and property ownership. It helps to search for the husband's first name because most married couples purchase property jointly, which also helps you in locating the female classmate. If you know the women's date of birth you'll be able to access positive identification of other documents.

Locating school classmates is a continual project during class reunion planning. Do not expect to complete the task before you start other sides of class reunion planning.

While your largest push in locating old classmates should be made before your first promotional e-mail or mailing, you must continue the effort till the day of your class reunion so that as many folks as practical can be included.

Do not get deterred if you can't find all of your high school classmates, and do not think everybody wants to be found and wants to take part in the reunion. For some, it could be the past is loaded with upsetting or distressing memories or there could be extenuating circumstances in their present life.

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How Not to Have Your Class Reunion Canceled

-Doug Woods

My 35th high school reunion was supposed to have occurred this summer, but unfortunately, it was canceled due to "lack of interest." I couldn't believe it, and to say the least, I was a bit disappointed, as I always look forward to our class reunions and reconnecting with all of my old friends-most of whom I haven't seen since our last reunion.

Distance and time constraints prohibited me from being a part of the reunion committee, and I certainly don't fault the group for trying to put this thing together. It's not an easy task, and demands plenty of time and effort to plan a successful event. However, I looked back at the way it was planned and determined that it failed not because of lack of proper planning, interest, poor location or high cost. Rather, cancellation was necessary due to inadequate notification and follow up to members of the graduating class. Many in the class simply did not know about it.

The only notification of the reunion was by a series of approximately 5 or 6 emails which announced and described the event, invited graduates to attend, and followed up. Though email is cost effective and can be useful, it should be just one element of the notification and promotional process.

To make your class reunion (family or military reunion for that matter) a successful event, it requires usage of a variety of different promotional tools to get the word out so that you have the highest possible turnout. The rest of this article will hopefully give you some tips and ideas so that your reunion is well attended.

Locating your classmates is obviously the first thing that you need to do, and is a subject for an entirely different article by itself, and will not be covered here. For now, you can do a web search on "finding classmates" or some similar search phrase to find the various tools available to accomplish this daunting task. Once you have your list of classmates together, the fun really begins!

Publicizing your Class Reunions

• Email. It's a great way to stay top-of-mind with your classmates and to inform them of upcoming deadlines and reminders for events. Create various guest lists and send specific emails to each group. Email is also a great tool to solicit classmates for help in locating missing classmates. Popular uses of email include newsletters, special announcements, thank yous, "In Memory" notices, and help finding missing classmates.

• Telephone. Get together one night with the rest of your committee, along with some pizza and drinks, and start dialing. You will not only have fun with this, but can often enlist others to help spread the word.

• Mail. Send a letter to the entire class. In most cases, classmates who are not personally contacted are unlikely to attend. The letter should include the following: a form requesting biographical data, a survey of desired reunion activities, a list of "lost" classmates and a request for any information available on these people, and a postage-paid return envelope. Having the input of every class member will make the task of accommodating each individual's different interests less challenging.

• Local newspapers. Most will run an announcement in the community notice section for free or for minimal cost.

• Your high school website. Most have pages devoted to upcoming reunion announcements.

• Your high school alumni website. You might discuss promotional ideas with your school's alumni director.

• Class websites from other years at your high school.

• Alumni service web sites (ie. schoolmates.com, alumni.net, reunion.com, etc.

• Your own class web site. A reunion website for your high school reunion is a great way to ensure that you have great attendance at your class reunion and to create buzz among your classmates. When your classmates read stories and see the pictures of teachers and old friends, it will create a nostalgic mood that will build momentum right up to your high school reunion.

• Create a blog. Blogging is a terrific way for you to post a lot of timely and interesting content pertaining to your reunion, and can create an interactive experience among classmates who comment on your posts, and keeps them coming back frequently for updates.

• Message boards. A web site will often come with a message board application built-in. Classmates can communicate to you and each other on your website via the message boards. Use it as a forum to share ideas and suggestions. Message boards are designed to keep classmates returning to your website since it is often used as a question and answer forum.

• Social sites. Don't forget about sites such as Facebook and MySpace.

• Public reunion announcement web sites (ie. reunionannouncements.com, etc.)

• Public radio and public access station announcements and their websites.

• Word of mouth can work great too.

Don't forget to document what worked and what didn't work, in case you're lucky enough to be on the committee for your next reunion. If you can effectively use several of the ideas in this article, you'll substantially increase your chances of having a very successful event!

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