UPDATE DECEMBER 2019
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A MEETING to PLAN the 55-YEAR REUNION will take place on Wednesday, January 15, 11:30 a.m., at Fargo’s Pizza Company located at 2910 East Platte Avenue in Colorado Springs. Our classmate Ron Petty reserved the room for the gathering, so mention his name to the staff at the reception area so that you can be directed to the right place. At the gathering, attendees will discuss plans for the 55-year reunion to take place in the summer 2021. Even if you cannot commit to helping to plan the reunion, please attend the meeting anyway to enjoy lunch and friendly talk with classmates. So that the restaurant can make advance plans for the gathering, please RSVP no later than Sunday, January 12, via email to:
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YOUR INPUT IS NEEDED regarding the date and type of event for the 55-year reunion to take place in the summer of 2021. It is important to get YOUR input so that the reunion committee can be better informed before making decisions in early 2020. Please submit your input to this email box (WHSclass1966@Yahoo.com) NO LATER than January 1, 2020, so that your input can be submitted to and considered by the reunion committee before decisions are made about the event. If you are among the classmates (Marcia, Adragna, Doug, and others) who have already provided input, thank you for doing so and there is no need to resubmit your input unless you want to modify your previous input.
What type of event would you prefer?
__ Informal outdoor picnic (with indoor option IF rain)
__ Informal indoor sit-down meal in hotel banquet room
__ Informal indoor sit-down meal in restaurant private room
__ Formal and fancy event in a hotel banquet room
__ Other (please specify)
How should attendees share memories?
__ Open microphone for sharing memories of WHS in 1960s
__ No microphone, just one-on-one sharing of memories.
__ Combination of microphone and one-on-one story sharing.
__ Other (please specify)
Should there be music and dancing?
__ Maybe one part of the event.
__ Definitely throughout the event.
__ No music and dancing, please.
__ Other (please specify)
What would be a reasonable registration fee?
__ $25 per person (to cover food and space rental)
__ $40 per person (to cover food and space rental)
__ $50 per person (to cover food and space rental)
__ Other (please specify)
Which date would be best for you? Please furnish as many of the proposed dates as possible so that they can be compared to the availability of other classmates. Please try to avoid providing only one date. With there being 116 classmates who are accounted for and who are on our confidential contact list, it can be a challenge to come up with a convenient date for that many people. There are an additional 84 people (surviving family members, surviving friends, and non-1966 WHS graduates) who are also on our confidential contact list, so there are 200 people with whom we are in contact. Listed below are the proposed dates.
__ Saturday, June 19, 2021
__ Saturday, June 26, 2021
__ Saturday, JULY 10, 2021
__ Saturday, JULY 17, 2021
__ Saturday, JULY 24, 2021
__ Saturday, JULY 31, 2021
__ Saturday, AUG. 7, 2021
__ Saturday, AUG. 14, 2021
__ Saturday, AUG. 21, 2021
__ Other (please specify)
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THE 55-year REUNION COMMITTEE is made up of the following classmates: Patti Kueck Daniel; Lydia Romero Fine; Linda Nolin Weber; Maryellen Brada Manuszak; Marie “Mimi” George Torreano; Ron Petty; Bruce McAlexander; Warren Knight; Roy Manuszak; Donnie Martinez; Paul Snell; Mike Adragna; Steve Cox; and, Bruce Brian. Because the planning committee is still in the early pages, other classmates are always welcome to become part of the process to plan the event.
Paul and Donnie offered to be on the committee with the caveat that they will do so from afar (via the class website and email broadcasts) due to uncontrolled population growth causing ongoing traffic congestion nightmares whenever they travel to Colorado Springs from their respective homes located in different parts of Denver.
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FEEDBACK FROM READERS includes the below-listed entries that were submitted in response to information contained in previous updates.
I want to thank Joy Payne Humphrey for clarification on her post [November 2019 update]. I, Donna Williams Humphrey, did know Deb Armknecht Allen, but not like the friendship she and Joy experienced. I also have not seen or talked to Joy in many years – the last time at Wells Fargo when she was at the Westside Safeway store. Hi Joy!! Hope you’re well. My Humphrey family is from Black Forest and are not related to Dean Humphrey [Joy’s husband]. Thank you all.
-- Donna Williams Humphrey, Class of 1966
Donnie, thank you so much for your updates. They always bring back so many happy memories. As to the 55th reunion, I just ask that whatever venue is selected please make it wheelchair accessible. Again, thanks.
-- Doug Allen, Class of 1966
Donnie, why do I laugh so easily when you are talking to me? I must have a morbid sense of humor and to find this out after all these years! I was having such a horrible time remembering all these people at the September 2019 class luncheon, but when you bought my lunch I had such a different attitude after you paid my bill.
-- Bruce McAlexander, Class of 1966
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THIS YEAR marks 14 YEARS that I have been the volunteer coordinator handling email communications to our classmates. I remember well how it all got started. While taking an afternoon stroll down Security Boulevard during a full-weekend visit at the Security home of my longtime friend Renee (Class of 1965) and her mother in September 2005, our classmate Ron Petty was driving by and stopped by to say hello as we had not seen one another for a few years. He asked if I would be interested in having lunch with him and our classmate Bruce McAlexander at some point that weekend when I was staying with Renee and her mother. While having lunch with Bruce and Ron at an Asian restaurant near K-mart in Security, they talked about having a 40-year reunion in 2006 and urged me to join them in organizing the reunion. Neither one of them had experience with email, and I was the only one who knew how to use a computer (despite never having one) and I was the only one who had the email addresses of several classmates with whom I was in periodic contact. I hesitated to make a commitment to help Bruce and Ron with the reunion project because, at that point in time, it was the first year of dealing with massive nerve damage and my recovery chances were unknown at that time. Nonetheless, I agreed to give it a try. My first email announcement was sent to numerous classmates in September 2005 to let them know that Bruce and Ron were beginning the groundwork for a reunion in mid-2006. Between the time of my first email announcement in September 2005 and my second one in January 2006, my confidential email list kept growing by leaps and bounds as word began to spread among our classmates. By the time of the first meeting of the planning committee in February 2006, it was clear that somebody was needed to do a computerized spreadsheet to handle the growing list of contacts I had accumulated. Because I did not have a computer and was not familiar with spreadsheets, our classmate Bruce Brian volunteered to do the spreadsheet task as a member of the planning committee. After he handled the spreadsheet project for three months, our classmate Gillie Walker took on the task and carried it all the way through the July 2006 reunion clear up through the July 2011 reunion.
From September 2005 through the present time December 2019, it has been a little more than 14 years of being the volunteer coordinator handling email communications to our classmates.
Online archives have been amassed by me in the course of being the volunteer email coordinator for a little more than 14 years. You probably already know that being a “hoarder” is one of the many (and there are many) stereotypes about older people. Living very simply with meager possessions and without modern technology at home, I definitely do not fit the “hoarder” stereotype at home. However, that stereotype definitely applies to me when storing online communications neatly organized in folders contained in my online archives. Being an online “hoarder” comes in handy whenever there is a periodic inquiry from a classmate about a specific situation or person from the “old days” or modern times.
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TO VISIT OUR CLASS WEBSITE that was assembled and has been maintained since April 2009 by our Class Committee member and Webmaster, Paul Snell, please go to:
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PLEASE do not TAKE IT PERSONALLY if you do not hear from Class Committee members right away. As volunteers, we have only so much time within which to do our volunteer work as well as tend to other aspects of our personal lives. Delays in my replies, in particular, are due to me not being awake very much anymore as sleeping long hours is the only time period during which there is total relief from my neurological illness for which there is no cure. It is now fifteen (15) years that I have had massive nerve damage. As noted in my update in July 2013, another reason for delays in my replies is that I have been “slowing down” more and more since late 2012 – it takes me forever to get something done. My doctors attribute the slowness to me getting older, not the neurological illness.
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This update was prepared by me.
Respectfully submitted,
Donnie Martinez
Known at WHS by stepfather’s surname Collier
Martinez is my birth certificate and legal surname
a/k/a Butch (pronounced Booch), family nickname since childhood
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