Group Email List - Tosaeast1976

2019 Archive

The postings below are the messages sent to our class during 2019.

Click here to see the 2022 messages.
Click here to see the 2020-21 messages.
Click here to see the 2018 messages.
Click here to see the 2017 messages.
Click here to see the 2016 messages.

Contact Info / Tosa Fest / 45th Reunion

09/05/2019

Hi Everyone!

Yes, it's been quite a while since my last message to the group. Over 14 months! Frankly, it's mostly good news because it means we haven't lost any of our classmates in a very long time. Not that I'm sure of that, but none have come to my attention.

Contact Info Request

I'm always elated when I get a new contact so I can take them off the Missing List. It is absolutely the opposite when someone has to go back on that list because their contact information has changed and here I'm mostly talking about emails. Though they are a great way to communicate to all of you quickly and free, an email can go bad and if that's my only piece of contact info, you're immediately lost.

The biggest issue I'm facing in this regard are those of you who have given me work email addresses. Our class is approaching retirement age with many already reaching that milestone and it is general practice that you lose your work email when you are no longer employed. Keep in mind I don't have a problem using your work email. It's just that I know almost everyone because of cell phones has another email address available. And if your significant other has one available, it would be good to have that. Important: I only want to have it available should your primary email suddenly become undeliverable. Also, you may get messages to multiple email addresses! This can be especially handy if you are transitioning from one email to another.

But I also like to have phone numbers and addresses. Just in case I need them! So please take a minute or two to fill out whatever contact info you can.

http://www.tosaeast1976.com/about/update_info.asp

Tosa Fest 2019

This weekend is Tosa Fest! As usual, it is held on Friday evening and all day Saturday. One big change that started last year is the venue location has changed from State Street to Hart Park in the new area east of the stadium

This year, Debbie and I will be there Friday evening and Saturday afternoon. If you want to meet up with us but can't find us, you can text me or Debbie.

45th Reunion?

We are now about 2 years out from a possible 45th class reunion. Will there be one? There are no actual plans at this time. What I will say is it's entirely dependent on the interest shown by the class. If we have enough classmates interested in attending, we'll make the effort. We plan on sending out a questionnaire to get feedback sometime next year.

Gene Hanson

In Memoriam - David Hart

11/05/2019

Classmates,

It is with sadness that I have to report that our classmate, David Hart, passed away on October 17th at age 61. His funeral was on November 4th. He was apparently battling cancer for the last 18 months of his life.

Our thoughts and prayers go to David's family.

You can see more information at David's obituary:

www.legacy.com/obituaries/jsonline/obituary.aspx?n=david-a-hart&pid=194285986

Website Updates

I recently updated the entire class website for the sole purpose of making it mobile friendly. This had been on my to-do list for an embarrassingly long time, but I didn't want to lose the layout that I had which was optimized for larger computer screens. A friend suggested to me some software and giving it a try, I saw a way to basically keep the large layout intact while making it condense nicely on the smaller screens. But it's also what they call "responsive" because it automatically adjusts to other screen sizes.

Another practical reason for making it mobile friendly has to do with Google. When they are ranking websites, it scores mobile friendly sites higher and I have already seen results which verify that. When you now do a search on "Tosa East Reunion" (note not even putting in our year), our site generally comes up first! This is good because we still have a bunch of classmates who are still missing and if we can't find them, I want them to easily find us.

www.tosaeast1976.com

Class Pictures

I'm always looking for anyone to share their class pictures. On our website we have a complete collection from McKinley and a fairly good set from Lincoln. We have only small sets from Washington, Roosevelt, St. Bernard, St. Pius, and Pilgrim Lutheran. And, sadly, we are completely missing Wilson, Jefferson, Christ King, and St. Jude. If you have your class pictures, take a look at your school and see if you have ones we still need. If you can't scan them, you can always mail them to me and when I'm done I'll send them back.

www.tosaeast1976.com/yearbooks/index.asp#gradeschool

On Facebook we've been having a game seeing if we can identify the kids and to that end I add numbers. Kindergarten pictures like the one above can be extremely difficult. But as you go up in grades the identifications get easier. For example, the picture above is far from complete. Here's who we have (or think we have) identified in this Lincoln Kindergarten photo: 1. ?, 2. ?, 3. Mary Lindl, 4. Kathy Reinke, 5. Tracey Flemming, 6. ?, 7. Sue Babb, 8. Eric Adolphson, 9. Terry Constable, 10. Dave Amacher, 11. ?, 12. ?, 13. Brian Gorecki, 14. ?, 15. Bill Broadberry, 16. Steve Benthien?, 17. Pete or Ben Rosine?, 18. Mark Gostisha.

[Indentification update]
As a result of this email, several classmates offered suggestions for some of the unidentified kids: 1. Sherry Schulz?, 12. Mike Lynch (self-identified!), 17. Ben Rosene

Feel free to email me if you can identify anyone missing or think there are mistakes.

Gene Hanson

Happy New Year - Year in Review

1/1/2020

Tosa East Class of 76:

Debbie and I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and we now wish to extend to our entire class a very Happy New Year!

It was another good year of basically not hearing from me because I only received one report of a classmates passing: David Hart.

Here are some of the year's highlights and all of this was posted on our class Facebook page. I did this last year and because of the positive feedback I thought I'd do it again because not all of our class have Facebook accounts or are active on that site. And for those you who follow our Facebook page, I hope you enjoy looking back.

For myself, the big highlight of the year was updating the entire class website to make it mobile friendly which in turn has made finding the site easier.

Because this year's review is so lengthy, with too many photos and links for an email (more possibility of this ending up in spam), I've got this simple link to the website where I can also hyperlink to other articles and especially links to the full-sized images. The photos above are a preview. Please click/tap the following link for the full year in review.

www.tosaeast1976.com/about/2019_year_in_review.asp

Again, everyone have a very Happy New Year!