40th Reunion. What a blast!
Now Playing: Great job by our reunion committee
To: Reunion committee members
From: Pete Weiss
re: Great job Saturday Night!
date: 10/13/09
I'm sure that many of you are still recovering from an event filled weekend which included not only our wonderful reunion, but the Eagles Sunday victory, and the Phillies amazing comeback and eventual victory in the NLDS against Colorado.
I must commend our entire reunion committee for their Herculean efforts in putting together such a wonderfully successful 40th reunion celebration Saturday evening.
In my opinion, this was a classy event from start to finish and you should all be very proud of having been a part of it. Despite several glitches, we all showed great poise under some unexpected pressures. I have received many emails and phone calls from our classmates thanking me and our committee for the extraordinary work and planning we do. Everyone has been extremely and genuinely complimentary about how well organized we were and how almost every detail was attended to.
I also received a lot of favorable compliments about how outstanding our band was.
Particular recognition should be given at this time to the following committee members for their superior efforts in making this such a successful reunion event.
Joel Gibbs - for all the work he did as head of our entertainment committee promoting the reunion and re-designing our invitation, putting together the yearbook CD and arranging for it to be reproduced with an image of our yearbook cover on the face of the CD. Joel also was responsible for procuring the DJ, the videographer, and photographer for our reunion. Even more notable, I must commend Joel for his initiative and leadership in organizing and motivating that fabulous band, Not Collidge Mateerial. They have stayed together for five years now. Once again, the band was out of this world and everyone loved you guys. The energy in the room seemed to come to a crescendo when they played. I know how much dedication and practice it took for all the band members to play together so well. It was Joel's vision, artistic talent, and showmanship that pulled the whole thing together so well and made the entire reunion such a memorable and authentically NEHS'69 event.
Sandi (Depue) Bergman- for her involvement and participation in many areas but particularly the incredible amount of work she did in producing those terrific, professional looking photo name tags. They were truly awesome! Also, Sandy put together a Power Point interface for our yearbook CD with some help from Joel Gibbs, Gary Moskowitz, and Bruce Share. Thanks for everything Sandy.
Mimi Shapiro - Mimi did a lot of things to help. She was the "pit bull" that searched and found about 125 of our missing classmates. She allowed us to use her home for one of our meetings. She created a magnificent memorabilia table for people to browse and enjoy during our reunion. Many people commented about the spectacular display she produced. Great job Mimi!
Bruce Share - for his tireless efforts in so many areas. Just to mention a few - his tremendous job as our treasurer in collecting, recording, depositing, disbursing, etc. all reunion funds, etc. Bruce also set up our online payment system though Paypal and Eventbrite which made it easy to register and pay for the reunion. Thanks again Bruce.
Ron Zaritsky - for his organized and effective supervision of our registration tables. Everything moved smoothly and efficiently despite several glitches and Ron maintained his calm and composure and that of everyone else. Good job Ron!
Bob Lankin - for allowing us to use his office for our reunion phonathon and making sure we all got fed and had phones and desks.
Barbara Lewis (Baxt) - for her efforts in designing and printing our "Save the date" announcements.
Lisa Black (Biren) - for her efforts in helping in so many areas including copying and printing our invitations.
Nancy Kauderer (Davis) - for helping in many areas including allowing us the use of her home for one of our meetings.
Wendy Goldman (Harris)- for her behind the scenes work and useful suggestions in so many important areas. Among them, Wendy volunteered to take care of getting out the "Save the Date" reunion announcements. She also provided oversight for getting our invitations folded and supervised our volunteers in getting the invitations stuffed and in the mail.
Carolyn Verdi - for her great work in helping to identify, analyze, compare, and ultimately select the Doubletree Hotel as our reunion facility. Carolyn selected the food and desert menu. She also acted as our contact to interface with the hotel's banquet staff to facilitate and resolve many issues including arrangements to meet the logistical and equipment needs of the band. And how about those Red Rose centerpieces. Weren't they great against the black table clothes!
Gary Moskowitz - In addition to playing in the band, Gary scanned some missing sections of our yearbook including the supplement which was later incorporated into the Yearbook CD we have available for sale.
Terry Abrams - for doing his usual terrific job as master of ceremonies. It almost seems like it wouldn't feel like our reunion without Terry being in charge during whatever ceremony is appropriate at the time.
I also want to acknowledge the useful and important contributions of Steve Aaronson, Roz Chanin (Aaronson), Bette Giwerc (Allekkote), Eileen Gerson (Greenberg), Bonnie Adler (Keen), Eileen Masover, Andrea Greenberg (Sachs), Jay Rose, Ricky Segal, Joan Anton, Sandy Hyman, Elaine Soloff, Donna Dodaro, and Ellen Soklove. Whether you offered suggestions from a distance, attended our planning meetings, helped at the phon-a-thon, helped at the registration tables, or called and encouraged classmates to join us, your efforts helped make this team effort a uniquely successful one.
This was a totally volunteer effort. I'm truly amazed at how a volunteer effort of this magnitude was completed so successfully. I believe that the image of all our committee members and our class as a whole was favorably enhanced as a result of such a great volunteer effort. Again my personal thanks for a job well done.
I'll be sending additional updates about the reunion soon.
Pete Weiss
Posted by ne69news
at 2:57 PM EDT