by
Bucky
Eacret
Senior Class President 1979
June
29, 1999
When I ran into my classmate at Six Flags
two years ago I had no idea that our meeting
would be so fateful! I had not seen
Lorri (Crossno) Nevil in years and now here
we were, she from Canton and me from Austin,
crossing paths in Arlington. After
some small talk, and if you know Lorri you
know that could take quite a while, she
said, "So have you started planning
the 20 year reunion yet?" At
that point I had not even thought about
the reunion, so I had to confess that
I had not. "You know its not
too soon to start," she said.
Now I have never been accused of not
being able to delegate, so as class president
I said, "Well how would you like to
be on the planning committee? You
can even be the chairwoman if you'd like."
She said she'd love to be on the committee,
did not think she'd chair though, but would
love to put together a class of '79 web
site. We exchanged e-mail addresses
and went our
separate ways.
When I got back to Austin, she had already
e-mailed me with some ideas, and was beginning
work on the web site. Not to be outdone,
I e-mailed some of my faithful workers from
past reunions and started putting together
the planning committee. The first
two I contacted on the internet were Camille
(Shipes) Garner in McKinney and Janet (Reynolds)
Asher in Farmer's Branch. They had
worked very hard on previous reunions and
Janet had even chaired the 10 year. They
did not hesitate to say yes, Camille was
appointed this year's chairwoman, and we
were off. It was not long until we
had added Randy Krone, Lori (Antoine) Krone,
Dempsey Cluff, and Jay Valadez of Dallas,
and Midge (Anderson) Carstensen of Seattle
to the committee. See a pattern yet?
We were scattered all over the place,
but through the miracle of the internet
we were going to be a committee and
plan a reunion.
We had numerous committee meetings on-line
in chat rooms, we traded thousands of e-mails,
we tried to find as many classmates' e-mail
addresses as we could, and in the meantime
Lorri was putting the finishing touches
on our web site. The first time I
went to it I could not believe it. This
was a great web site! Cougars everywhere,
songs playing, profile pages, links to all
kinds of cool sites, and information about
our 20th high school reunion. This
was great, but the skeptic in me wondered
if anyone but us would ever go to it.
Now skip ahead two years, thousands of
e-mails and visits to our web site by classmates
later, to last weekend. We pulled
off the reunion to end all reunions. It
was fantastic! Friday night a couple
of hundred people gathered at Ben's Half
Yard House on Greenville Avenue for an informal
ice breaker. Food, drinks, door prizes,
Karaoke, we had a blast! Saturday
morning the bravest of us all met in Grand
Prairie for the Class of '79 Reunion Golf
Tournament, hosted by Christi (Webb) O'Brien,
who is by the way a very good golfer. We
had a great tournament, got a LOT of sun,
and had great time together.
Saturday night we threw an unbelievable
gala at the Marriott Quorum. Nearly
three hundred people ate, drank, danced,
renewed old friendships, watched slides
from 1979 running continuously, and had
a ball. Lori (Antoine) Krone set up
unbelievable memorabilia displays with items
from Kindergarten through High School. Randy
"The Voice" Krone emceed the evening.
Numerous awards were presented. The
current BA Cheerleaders, Belles, and Mascot
performed for us and led us in the alma
mater. We not only took a Bryan Adams
class picture, but we also took Hill and
Gaston Junior High pictures, as well as
every Elementary School represented! It
was so much fun to be with people that had
known each other for so long. Two
Elementary Schools had way more in attendance
than anyone else. I wish I could say
that my Hexter Hawks had the most at 21,
but it was Reilly with 23 that took
the prize.
Not all of our classmates were able to
make it to the reunion in person, but Lorri
had that covered too. She set up a
laptop computer right there next to the
dance floor, so we could chat on-line with
classmates that could not make it for one
reason or another. All night long
we were able to include many of our far
away friends in our extremely fun evening.
I could not believe how much the internet
had enhanced our reunion! But I was
not the only one.
A reporter from the New York Times had
come across our web site and had been very
impressed. She not only saw what great
quality work it was, but also how it was
being used to bring our class and our reunion
together. She contacted and interviewed
Lorri and Camille and also discovered what
a vital role the internet played in the
planning of the reunion, bringing the scattered
committee members together for real time
meetings. She also learned what a
great tool it was for disseminating information
about the reunion and gathering information
on classmates. Lorri had set it up
so that we could type a message, click,
and send it out to every classmate with
e-mail! The reporter was so impressed
that she sent a photographer all the way
to Dallas to take pictures of the event!
Be looking for the story in the New
York Times in the near future. UPDATE 8-5-99
HERE
IT IS!
But we were not through. Sunday
afternoon we all gathered at Bob Woodruff
Park in Plano for a family picnic. Jay
Valadez showed up in a moving van and unloaded
balloons and toys for the kids. There
were all kinds of fun things to do there,
including a jam session by some of our musically
inclined classmates Greg Todora on
keyboards, Lance Davis on bass, Shane Farris
on guitar, and yours truly on drums. The
four of us had never played together and
had no idea before we got there what we
would play, but we just had a great time
and were told we sounded pretty good. Everyone
seemed to have a very good time, then it
was over.
I must admit that although I was totally
exhausted, I was sad that it was over. Sad
because I did not want the fun to end, and
sad because realistically I knew it would
be several years before I would see many
of my classmates again. But I'm determined
to keep up with everyone better this time.
And hey, with the website still up
and running, dozens of digital pictures
of the reunion already being posted on it,
and the e-mails pouring in, it looks like
it just might happen! |
