It's personal

As most of you who follow this blog know, this little project of ours, the Wayne Valley Class of 1967 Alumni Directory, is something that we're doing for the class, because after all these years, its a shame that the only way we can get in touch with someone we've lost touch with is to perchance meet them at a reunion if you and that person both happen to attend. Or wait another 5 or 10 years. Well, we all know that we may or may not have that time. It's not up to us necessarily, at this point, and that's just a sad truth.

This is a resource that has been needed for years. It could easily have been done long ago, but that's neither here nor there. It is here now and now we can memorialize our fallen, honor our veterans, and celebrate with once long-lost friends that life does go on, mostly happily. Once rediscovered and reconnected, we can now stay in touch with social media and via current technologies. Some people have asked me why I waited so long to do this. I just told them it's not a perfect world; otherwise we'd have all our hair and teeth and fit into our high school jeans. It's here now. So be part of it.

I have lived many lives in many places and all this moving about the country has made it difficult for my friends to keep up with me and for me to stay in touch with them. Some I always knew roughly where they were, others were lost in the fog of time and the more time that passed, the "loster" and "loster" they got. One in particular, had been lost to me for 44 years despite every attempt I made to locate him. His childhood home had been sold, his parents passed away. His brother moved and I thought him deceased and the trail just went cold except for a single memory and a couple of vanity LP's he cut in his late teens. It was this project, this directory that went indirectly through clue after clue from multiple classmates that reconnected us today. Now I know he is alive and well and that after talking on the phone, we still understood each other, and like I keep telling everyone, the reasons we were friends in the first place still exist. I told one of our other friends that today, I am really happy.

It's more than just a class resource for me. It's personal, too.