I am trying to find old classmates from Troy High School Class of '89?

Question

What is the best people search site that will allow me to find someone with little information? This is for my 20 year reunion, not family members.

Answer 1

I was on the search committee for my class. First, you need a committee to help you, if your class was over 40 members. Divide up the work. There are several ways to find people.

The easiest is to have them find you. Some of them will notice what year it is, subtract 5, 10, 15 or 20 and look for a reunion. So, make sure the school secretary has the name, snail mail address, e-mail address, and telephone number of the contact person, and URL for the class. Make sure you have some sort of web site, even if it is just a page on Geocities, facebook or myspace.  Make sure the official school site has a link to it, too.

If you had a reunion 5 or 10 years ago, get the contact list they used. Some people will have moved or changed phone numbers, but some won’t.

Consider paying for a year’s membership in Classmates.com. It is the biggest of the reunion sites.

Once in a while you can find someone with an exact phrase search in Google. That means you use quotation marks. You have to try all four forms of the name:

"Abraham Lincoln"

"Abe Lincoln"

"Lincoln, Abraham"

"Lincoln, Abe"

The case isn't important. You do have to use double quotes ("), not single ones (').

If the town is small and the surname is rare, call everyone in the town (or county) with that surname and ask if they know the Jacob Jablonski that graduated from George Washington High in 19xx.

Once you find people, ask them if they know anyone else.

Our class had 500+ members; 600 if you count those who moved away before they graduated or dropped out. We had names and addresses for 200 of them for our last reunion. Your results may vary, as they say, but don’t expect to find everyone.

One thing that helps enormously but takes 20 hours to set up and 1 – 2 hours a month is a reunion site. I have ours as a sub-section of  my web site:

http://www.tedpack.org/cvhs1966.html

I send out an update once a month, to make sure the e-mail address I have is accurate. If it bounces, I note the fact and disable the link on the person’s entry.

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Here is some advice you didn't ask for that I paste every chance I get, hoping no one else will fall victim to the World's Stupidest Disk Jockey.

(See http://www.tedpack.org/cvhs/whyvirt.html for details.)

The most important thing you can do to insure a good time is talk to the DJ before hand. The people who never left town and see each other every week at PTA, soccer practice, poker night etc. are going to want to dance. The ones who DID leave town and flew 1,500 miles to attend are going to want to catch up, and they are not going to want to shout over the music.

The ideal solution, if you can afford it, is to hire two rooms. Unless you are from Beverly Hills High, you won't be able to do that. Having the music "on" for 30 minutes, then off for 30 would be a reasonable compromise. Promise the DJ the same amount of money as if he played all night. Impress upon him the desire of half the audience to talk. Reunions are not the same as dances or concerts. People  don't go to concerts to talk. They do go to reunions want to talk. Keep hammering that home to the DJ. If necessary, tattoo it on his forehead backwards and give him a mirror. Appoint a "Quiet time" monitor.

Tell people at the start of the affair what you are doing, so they know. Tell them that you know half of them will be unhappy during the music and half will be unhappy during the quiet time, and you can't please everyone. If you like, you can tell the joke about the mathematician who had one foot in a bucket of ice water and the other in a bucket of boiling water. He said "If you take the average, I'm comfortable".

I hear "It was a nice reunion, but the DJ ruined it" a dozen times a year from friends and family.

Answer 2

search the name of your school on myspace