Attn: Joyce Rudolph - For Around Town Section or anywhere appropriate:

Our John Burroughs High School Class of 55 has been getting real close with the use of E - Mail and a lot of time spent by our Reunion Chairman Carol Muscorella Maitland and some helpers. We more than doubled our total classmates with the use of e mail through Classmates.com and searching using the computer with the reverse directory etc. Carol led the way in finding over 150 missing in the last two years. We now are down to 45 missing and 317 good addresses. Some interesting things are that there are still at least 5 teachers still living, in Burbank, that we had in 1955. Also there are 35 classmates still living in Burbank and another 45 within 50 miles of Burbank. Many classmates went to Burbank Schools in the 40's and 50's and then children and now many Grandchildren are in the same schools.

We have 15 or so at any one time using our private group chatline every Wed. nite for 2hrs. which has lasted over 4 hrs. on occasions. We have classmates from TN, TX, WY, NE, AZ, OR, FL and all over getting into the chat. Carol copies all the chat with an average of 25 full pages each week and sends them to over 210 on e mail. So many classmates have commented that they really enjoy reading this chat and more join in from this. We are having so much fun with 3 web sites, thousands of pictures, classmates Bio's, special dinners and events with pictures, classmates hobbies, classmate of the month, guess who, chain letters, and many other things of interest. Each of our 318 classmates have their own web page in one site created by one of our classmates. In each persons site you can bring up their graduation picture, pictures taken of them at the reunions they attended, current pictures and special events pictures of them. Even 40 picture slide shows of a classmates vacation in his web page.

Our class and several other local classes make good use of the internet to keep in touch with their graduating classmates. Many have on their website a memorial list and a list for their missing like our class does.

We are all proud of being a Burroughs Indian and helped fight to keep our Indian Mascot. We always know the Indians are strong and brave and are a proud race. We are proud to be associated with them. We want only positive use of the mascot to show that the Indians are a very great race of people. We have a large American Flag with a picture of an Indian in it to take to events.

Since we have 10 classmates living in Las Vegas, NV. we put together a mini reunion and now have booked 25 rooms for this event that will have over 50 in attendance so far and it isn't till Mar. 30th. All this is done quickly and with no charge via e mail. We sent about a 1,000 e mails to our congressman when it looked certain that we were going to loose the mascot. It worked and the mascot was saved by a few votes.

So many High School classes at Burroughs and Burbank Hi Schools have their own web sites. Some of the good ones are the Burroughs class of 80, 81, 82, 78 and others. We are certainly getting better aquainted with more classmates than we did in high school and now we are all popular as being the age of 65 has made us very equal. We will certainly be ready for a great turnout for our 50 th. Golden Anniversary in 2005. We aren't waiting for then to have events, thanks mainly to the use of the internet. Many find that using computers keeps their minds sharp plus gives them the satisfaction of keeping in touch with the classmates which bring back found memories plus give them something to keep them up to date. We are all a big happy family loving and laughing together!

Denny Grossman, JBHS 55 Reunion Secretary