Author: John
Houle (137.122.229.---)
Date: 05-03-03
15:13
Tania:
Having discussed the problems for
conducting
a school-wide reunion, I have some ideas for
their
solution.
1. One idea to get around the money
problem
would be to advertise a possible reunion and
ask
alumni to send in donations. If a
certain minimum threshold of
money could be
raised, then the reunion would proceed.
If a
sufficient amount of money could not
be raised by beforehand
donations, then the
money would be returned to the donors and
the reunion would be called off. (Don't
anyone send in any
money now to Richelieu
Valley High or any group claiming to
represent Richelieu Valley High alumni.
This idea is purely
theoretical at the
present time.)
2. Possible candidates
for chairing such a
reunion would be alumni still living on
the South Shore. Because of the amount of
time and work
involved in chairing a reunion,
I think that the only way to
recruit such a
reunion chairperson would be to offer them
a
small salary for their efforts. However,
this then compounds one
of the aforementioned
problems of lack of money because
additional
money would have to be found to pay the
additional salary for the chairperson. An
ideal person for
chairing such a reunion
would have a personal interest in the
school
and would also have enough time and
flexibility in
their schedules for such an
undertaking. I'm not being
chauvinistic
here, but perhaps such a person could include
a
Richelieu Valley High alumnus who is
currently a homemaker still
living on the
South Shore or else a retired Richelieu
Valley
High teacher who has similarly
remained on the South
Shore.
3. Another solution to the alumni research
and
money problems would be to look to the
alumni. One of the past
comments raised
about conducting a school-wide reunion came
from some alumni who had long since moved
far away from
Montreal and were no longer
residing on the South Shore. The
comment
made went something to the effect of: "What
can we
do to help since we live thousands of
miles away from
Montreal?". Such alumni
could make plenty of significant
contributions by donating money and finding
fellow alumni.
Since most of us are no
longer living in Montreal anyway, the
task
of finding fellow alumni involves making
long-distance
phone calls, surfing the
Internet, looking up old telephone
books
etc. Searching for fellow alumni can be
done from
anywhere, since in most cases it
involves conducting searches on
a long
distance basis.
4. Another solution to the money
and alumni
research problems involves the use of
Internet
technology. Using e-mail and the
alumni website could allow us
to save money
on the cost of mailing out invitations and
making long-distance telephone calls. There
are also Internet
search engines, telephone
directories, etc. that allow one to
search
for fellow alumni using the Internet.
(Such
activities could be referred to as
"cybersearching".)
5.
Another solution to all of the problems
could be to hire an
events management firm.
Events management firms stage events on a
cost basis. How much such firms would
charge for staging
such a high school reunion
is unknown. Furthermore, it is unknown
how
much money they would charge upfront as a
downpayment is
also unknown. This
downpayment problem is acute in our case
because we have little money at the present
time.
Let
us summarize. In the October, 1999
and November, 1999 meetings
only 8 alumni
and 2 teachers were able to make it to the
schoolwide reunion committee meeting. The
problems that we
were faced with were
insurmountable at that time.
Critically,
what are needed is: 1. sufficient money,
2.
sufficient manpower, 3. group of research
teams to generate
up-to-date alumni database
of addresses, 3. sufficient time to
organize
(6-18 months(?)) and 4. a reunion chairperson
to
manage all of the above.
I agree with Tania that it would be
ideal
for Richelieu Valley High alumni to organize
such a
school-wide reunion. However, since
none of we alumni have the
time, money and
energy to do so then perhaps having an events
management firm to do this job may be the way
to go, if it
is in even in fact decided upon
whether to proceed with such a
hypotherical
reunion.
In discussing the prospects for
conducting
a school-wide reunion I should make several
points clear:
1. I am not capable of acting as the
reunion
chair. Currently, I am located in Ottawa
and not in
Montreal. Further, I am currently
very busy studying at Carleton
University.
Being swamped with research I just don't
have
the time to manage such a reunion.
2. I do not have any
business interests in
any events management firms, ie I have no
affiliation with myhighschoolbuddies.com
or any other such
firms. I therefore make
no recommendation on which events
management
firm to hire to stage such a reunion if such
action is ever decided upon.
3. At the present time, this
discussion
thread is purely hypothetical. Nothing
has been
decided upon. We are purely
throwing ideas around. At the
October
and November 1999 meetings we were only
able to
attract a very small number of
alumni and teachers to our
meetings. So
many of us live so far away from Montreal
that
it is difficult to get there. A
final problem can be thrown into
the
cauldron: the lack of a central authority
in deciding
upon whether or not to embark
upon such a school-wide reunion.
The
decision upon whether to proceed with such a
"final
farewell" party will have to be made
by the alumni body as a
whole. I do not have
the authority to speak on behalf of other
Richelieu Valley High alumni. In summary,
in posting this
discussion thread I do not
want to prematurely raise anyone's
hopes up of conductinga school-wide reunion.
In conclusion,
as one reads the postings
one can detect a great deal of latent
interest in holding a final reunion for
Richelieu Valley
High. However, because
our two fall 1999 meetings attracted an
insufficient number of alumni, I thought
that by posting
this thread, the discussion
could be significantly enlarged in
scope to include the many alumni whose only remaining
contact
with Richelieu Valley High is
through Denis Bernicky's website.
If anyone
has ideas, thoughts or contributions to
make on
this subject, then this would be
the place to advance your
propositions.
Finally, out of the estimated population of
7000 Richelieu Valley High alumni, perhaps
some brave
alumnus will step forward to
volunteer as the reunion
chairperson.
Thanks in advance,
John
Houle
(Richelieu Valley, 1972)
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