Back in 1918, Evansville decided to use the top of an unused hill on the westside of Evansville to build a school. That school came to be known as Francis Joseph Reitz High School. Well, in 2018, Reitz will be 100 years old, and there's nothing like a century to make for a great celebration.
Once again, Linda finds herself in the middle of things. When Beth Carnahan (current principal of Reitz) first raised the notion of establishing an Outstanding Alumni group of people who bled blue and grey, who were active in their graduating classes, and who sparked reunions and kept track of everyone, I said to myself, "Self, I think they're talking about Linda!" Well I did nominate Linda and then didn't hear anything more until a couple weeks ago. Turns out Beth suggested to the Big Blue Boosters to contact us to work on the Century Campaign.
The long and short of the Century Campaign is to raise a lot of money to help fund Reitz's wish list for projects that the school needs that may not necessarily part of the EVSC budget. It also intends to hold a series of celebratory events over the course of 2018 culminating in some sort of blowout birthday bash.
So somehow or other, Linda and I will be helping to locate a group of active alumni from each class to try and contact every living classmate from '21 to 2018 and get them to contact their classmates. So far, we've been working on getting representatives from every graduating class to attend a January meeting with Beth Carnahan so she can fill in some details. We will also assist these other alumni reps on how to contact their classmates if they have not done so already. How you folks can help is if you know alums from other classes who might be interested in participating in this big effort, especially those who have been actively organizing their class events. Just let us know.
This is also a timely moment to mention to all to make sure that you let us know of any contact information changes that you have had in recent past; thanks to Pam Carroll Oldham for letting us know of your recent move from Germantown to Franklin Tennessee. Congratulations!
Needless to say, there is still a log of legwork that needs to be done, and after early November, any legwork that needs to be done will have to be done by Linda since I'm having foot surgery and will be off my feet for a couple, maybe three months. 2018 is still a ways off, and before then is the little matter of the 50th reunion of the Class of '67 in 2017. We are starting to turn the crank on some planning in this regard but it's way to soon to let the cat out of the bag. First we have to get the cat; actually we still have to get the bag!
On other fronts, sad news for the Beck family with Paul losing his 93 year old mom last week; on the other hand, cause for celebration with the Qualls family as Patty and her brothers help their parents' 70th anniversary. Albert and Dorothy have had a busy month with Albert flying to DC as part of Evansville's first direct flight WWII honor flight and Dorothy recovering from a bout of pneumonia.
