Class Breakfast
March 21, 2009
Sandy's "Official" Recap
The WHS Class of 1965 held their second breakfast get-together on Saturday, March 21st at the Palace Restaurant. There were 32 present: Sandy (Allem) Butch, Ron and Kathy Ballek, George Balzer, Barbara (Cann) Kendall, Lynn (Conn) Shigo, Bob Conroy, John and Mari (Kutz) Eisenhard, Mary (Ernst) Mann, Len Feinberg, Jerry and Pearl Hower, Terry Lee, Mike and Linda Mattes, Ro (Mentesana) Sweeney, Tony Morrow, Bev (Neiser) Couch, Joy (Pohlman) Roberts, Jay Rutan, Debbie (Schippers) and John Patterson, Gail (Schooley) Nagy and friend Daryl, Lorraine (Thompson) Arnts, Wayne Vierzbicki, Gail (Walter) and Karl Hettle, Bill Weaver, and Larry and Shirley Welch.
Menus from Holy Family, The Meadows, Green Pond, and Flynn’s were distributed for review and consideration for the 45th reunion. These locations/menus are posted on the website
and we welcome your comments. [NOTE: LINK TO LOCATIONS/MENUS REMOVED FOLLOWING DISCUSSION/DECISION AT 13 JUNE 2009 BREAKFAST.] But before we decide on the location, we must decide on when to hold the next reunion. The suggestions we had so far were to continue to have it the day after Thanksgiving or have a summer event. If we decide to try summertime, another suggestion was to rent the pavilion at Louise Moore Park and make it a full-day event with tennis, golf, and a pig roast.
Terry Lee received thanks and appreciation for his efforts in setting up the website. As of now this free website serves us well, but Terry reported it will probably exceed their disk space allocation in another year. At that point, Terry suggested switching to another host, which will cost us less than $100/year to maintain. Everyone was in agreement to continue the website. Terry also requested a recent picture and family information to post it on the site. You can click on any classmate whose name appears in blue on the website to read what they have provided. Please send your photo/information to Terry at TJLee089@rcn.com .
We also discussed possible gift suggestions to WHS on our 50th anniversary. The consensus was to give a scholarship to a member of the class of 2015. Ideally, we would like that scholarship to be $10,000, so we have six years to raise enough money. Some suggestions for raising this money included:
1. Add $5 to the cost of the 45th reunion earmarked for the 50th gift.
2. Do a calendar lottery. If we sold 1,000 calendars at $20/each, we’d get to keep one-half of that money and the other half would be used to pay the daily winners.
3. The Corvette Club does a car cruise for a worthy cause each year. In the last three years they have made $10,000 at each car cruise. Len Feinberg and Debbie Patterson will follow-up on contacts and a possible site, and provide more information at the next breakfast.
The following two suggestions came in via e-mail after the breakfast:
4. Do an ongoing scholarship from Northampton Community College in the Class of WHS65’s name. With whatever money we raise, we set up an endowment fund with NCC. They then use the interest from the fund to offer a scholarship to a WHS graduate.
5. The Rotary Club does a 50/50 to raise money. The Club sells 200 tickets at $100 each to raise $20,000 and gives away $10,000. 200 tickets at $50 is probably more appropriate for our group. Then we would have $5000 for the endowment. We could ask the Rotary Club for their help in doing this.
Please send any suggestions for fundraisers and your opinion on when to hold the 45th reunion to Sandy Butch (butchsl@airproducts.com).