The Reunion Planning Team conducted a survey from Jan 31 to Feb 7 in order to get a feel for what the turnout might be and what kind of things people were interested in. About 230 ’68 grads were invited via email (~140 verified emails and ~90 emails in unsure status). Responses were received from 95 classmates. Of those who indicated they were likely to come, that tallied 134 attendees, including partners and spouses. Given that not everyone responded to the survey, and that we missed emails for about 170 classmates, it seems likely that 200-250 might attend the milestone 50th Reunion.

For a reminder of the survey questions, click here.

Most important were what kind of activities, food, drink that people wanted, shown in the summary chart below. For food and drink there was a clear choice of hors d’ouevres + no-host bar for Sat evening. Not only is it the highest “Much enjoy” (60) it is by far the lowest negative (only 8 responded “Not very much” or “Not at all”). However, there were also enough people who would like a dinner, so the hors d’ouevres should be pretty good or maybe we have a “no host” food truck if possible. People are split on music, so having an area where music could be played with dancing, too, away from a main area might be good, so those in the main area can continue conversing as our hearing isn’t as good as it used to be.

The afternoon event had more negatives (41 or 43%) than the evening alternatives. Expect a proportionally lighter turnout.

There were a few who indicated in side emails that a Friday evening at a local bar, say O’Connors might be fun, but maybe we could do that in “flash mob” fashion as to not affect the cost. Steve Arel, O’Connors owner and Class of ’67, might be OK with that. Those were folks who might be able to come on Friday, but they have a Sat conflict.

The estimated budget responses shown below indicate just a few with “cost as no object.” However, $100 is the sweet spot. There are a total of 36 in the $25-$75 range, though, and we might be sensitive to that. Although most find $100 EZ-PZ, it would be great if we could get close to the $50 mark (there were only 3 that said $25).

Memory book participation shown below was somewhat lukewarm with positives outweighing the negatives by only about a  55:45 ratio, with “Not very likely” the HI bar. That said, we should put as little effort into it and for as cheap as possible. The current plan is to do a dynamic memory book on this website, similar format to the 40th spiral bound book, with the ability for people to comment back and forth on classmate’s pages – might be kind of fun for those inclined to do so. It will also not get lost – Committee members took up to 2 weeks to discover they even had the 40th Reunion Book 😉 AND we just update it for our 60th, 70th, and so on… This would be ZERO cost and volunteer effort could be as little as 10 minutes per page with a solid template and input+photos gathered via website form. Memory book submittals would be similar to the Contact form on this website, with the ability to upload a couple photos. We can also add the ability for everyone to leave comments on individual Memory Pages – our own private Facebook group.

Finally, a number of folks indicated they would be happy to volunteer to make the Reunion a success. Please see the list on the Reunion Team page. If you would like to add your name to that list, please shoot an email to: reunion@wilson68.org.