Were planning my 20 year class reunion how do we go about finding some of the classmates?

[Christina]

Some we haven't even heard from since graduation. Has anyone had this problem and how do we go about finding some of these classmates? Help!

[James R]

Friends Reunited, Facebook, Myspace, Bebo.

Or, just start telephoning everyone you know and working through that way.

[FREDO FROG]

ALL THE ABOVE answers it pretty well

[talkthetalk]

Start a group on Facebook and then invite people to join from your school and then those people will invite others etc etc... I have just arranged something similar on facebook and its great pratically everyone I used to go to college with was on there or was friends with someone else on there.

[largemountain162]

There are some legitimated ways to search for old friends, classmates and family members online and avoid all the Spam websites.
See details are http://www.associatedcontent.com/article...s_and.html

Also see http://www.classmates.com/

[magnum]

go on face book and search for the school or friends reunited

[Ted Pack]

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.

Buy a one year subscription to Classmates.com. In my experience a third of the messages bounce and a third don't answer, but that leaves a third who do answer.

If the town is small, call everyone with the missing person's surname and ask if they know him/her. You may get a relative.

Ask the reunion committees of the three classes "older" than you for a copy of their rosters with phone numbers. Call the people on them who have the same surname as the missing people. You might get an older sister / brother. (You could try the 3 classes "younger" than you, but their rosters will be relatively out of date.) If your class 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.

You can try Google, with quotation marks:
"Thomas Alva Edison"
"Thomas A. Edison"
"Thomas Edison"
"Edison, Thomas"

Don't try Google if the missing classmate has a common name or the same name as a celebrity.

Ask the local newspaper and radio programs if they run public service announcements about reunions.

Ask everyone who you DO know, even if they are not on the search committee, and everyone you find, if they know any one on the "Missing" list.

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.