We are having a hard time locating some of our classmates. We have used numeroues websites and services. Is there a time that we sould quit looking. Our reunion is in August.

Yes, I believe so. When you google "Fairborn High School Class of 1971" this web site comes up second under Classmates.com and I think they have some kind of thing with Google (who knows?). If someone truly is interested, they can find you at this web site.

Sometimes you have to leave the ball in their court. You do your best to provide an experience for your classmates, but they have to take some ownership of it also.

With this web site and Facebook we have found people we hadn't heard from in 40 years. We link this to the Fairborn City Schools web site and to Facebook, and we feel absolutely NO guilt if people don't find us. No computer? Too bad. It's not our responsibility to find every person.

I just am saddened when a missing turns into deceased.

Denise

Yes, I have a list, fairly short since we are a small class, but I periodically keep looking for them on google, etc. I even have Google alerts with search words like graduate Anadarko 1961 (also, I run Class of 1960 with same results).

At some point, you just realize that they won't be found. I really think some of mine "intentionally" do not want found. They are doing a very good job. Who knows, maybe they are staying "under the radar" from bill collectors, ex spouse, witness protection program, or as you say deceased. I even have classmates that are known to be deceased, but nothing can be found informational on that, and believe me I have tried all the avenues for deceased..........including relatives that just won't give information because they are trying to forget!

I don't know when we stopped looking for classmates before our 40th reunion last year.
I have been very surprised by a few classmates that have signed up in the past 6-9 months however, so hope is always there.
Publicdata.com [a pay site] has been fairly good at locating SOME classmates who are still with us.
Another site, findagrave.com, has been very helpful in finding a few we thought were deceased, yet we had no verification of such.

As far as classmates who do not have access to a computer [for whatever reason] sometimes another classmate can help create-update their profile when they are located, or even that persons children can do it for them.

When we DO find a classmate who does not want to have anything to have with us or our site, I simply make a note in their 'admin viewable only' area.

I am always open to more ideas!

Fred:

We keep looking.

Try to get some local publicity on the local radio or in the hometown paper that you are planning a reunion.

Use whitepages.com to locate possible relatives in the old hometown and call them to see if they have knowledge of where your missing members might be.

The hardest ones are those with the most common last names and those women in the class for whom you don't have a married name. We searched county marriage records and death records and found a few on both lists that way.

We started 18 months ago with about 110 truly 'missing' members and have it down to about 30 now.

In the end, you can't find them all. But you can look back and say you kept on tryin'.

John

Good point! I do have several, in both my class sites, that just will not use a computer. I have provided an area in the Profile for them to indicate "All my Computing is done by my Daughter, for me" or something like that. I have sisters taking care of brother, daughters, and grandchildren. They simply check the site periodically, and make sure the classmate gets a print out.

There is an old saying, usually Extremely True, if you don't know about your computer, ask the nearest 10 year old (actually, a 6 year old is shocking these days)....Today's world is much different than the 60s.

We have stopped actively looking because, as many have said, some just don't want to be found, and when found, aren't interested in us. However, every month, word gets spread around or someone decides to hunt down an old friend(s) and they Google the school. We get a few more each month.

There are many reasons they don't want to join us, but for those who do, the rewards are great. Those are the ones I worry about now.

Margaret

If you have access to either Alumni files of students that graduated 5 years before and 5 years after, look for brothers and sisters of classmates. When all else has failed, we have found several of our classmates through brothers, sisters and cousins. I agree with those who've said before that the females are the most difficult. If you don't have access to Alumni information, go to the library and look at the yearbooks before and after your class to identify possible brothers and sisters.
Hope this helps

Hello Fred ~ Here are my thoughts ...
You decide when you are done looking prior to the reunion. You have lots to do, and you can't spend valuable time doing something that is not going to produce much. I probably stopped eagerly searching for people 3 months in advance of our event. If I had some free time and had a different idea to find someone, then I tried that search avenue.
Like John C. says, searching for alumni is ongoing. Now, whenever I have the urge, I search various ways (Facebook, spokeo.com, classmates.com, zabasearch.com, whitepages.com, our alumni association site, and others.
I have even searched through SSDI.rootsweb.ancestry.com (I belong to ancestry.com). I've also searched through findagrave.com, but have never found anything through that site.

I failed to mention that, here in Texas, when a female registers to vote, she is SUPPOSED to list her maiden name. When using publicdata.com [again, a pay site] I was very successful in finding a large number of 'lost' female classmates by going to the voter registration section. I don't know what other states do however.

Slightly off topic, but related, do any of your school districts web sites have an 'alumni' page, where different classes can list a contact or web site for each alumni class? I am considering asking our school district to do just that.

Having read the other responses, I really can't add much. However, our class of 64, just as I gave up someone else contacted us. We put "news" in newspapers and asked other classmates about helping. We found several AFTER a 40th and after a 45th reunion. (Word gets out at how much fun was had at the reunions as time goes on.) We beg at the reunions to be informed if they move or if they hear of a death of a classmate. Our success with this website was phenominal and other classes around ours started joining. They are great at helping us keep tabs. BUT we did find a couple of classmates who told us to mark them off our list, some quite rudely. We can't help those who don't want to be found. I will say, one of those who told us to leave them alone evenually joined the website and communicates sometimes. Feel your way through, stay open to take them in and be happy for those you found.