Monday, July 24, 2006

Hi Bill,
It is time to get our act together on our 60th Class Reunion. Betty Jean McSloy, John Badgley and I have been kicking some ideas around and would really like you to join us as our Man in Missoula...altho that's not strictly true because we also have Dite working with us.

What we really need first of all is your local influence on getting a reservation for a block of rooms at a hotel, possibly Holiday Inn where you had our reception last time, with a reduced price, where we would also have our cocktail party and dinner. Maybe even the final day breakfast? I think most agreed that the 50th dinner was a fiasco and certainly not worth repeating. Since we will be having at least two functions at this place we hoped you could negotiate a great reduction on a block of rooms.

What ideas do you have for a name for this shindig? Any brainsorms on other things to do? We greatly appreciate all the work you, Rita and others have done in the past; with e-mail now commonplace we hope to relieve some of that burden by jazzing up our Class interest well in advance. Unless you object, we will run some trial balloons on our Class Blog which we expect to have up and running very soon, which the 70 or so of us who are linked by the internet can discuss.

One of the '48ers on the Sound,

Patricia VanVorous
patvv@earthlink.net
EarthLink Revolves Around You.
Dear Pat, thanks for the letter. I really don't think Holiday Inn or Doubletree are very interested in giving any deals and they charge an arm and a leg for the meeting rooms and banquets. I am not sure we can afford to do it the way you outlined but Nooney is the expert on that. I think any problem we had at the Elks can be solved with telling them how we would like the seating arranged. We left it up to them but they would do it any way we want. Holiday Inn would put us eight to a round table I think -- at least they did the last banquet I attended there.
But you are not alone in objecting to the Elks as a venue. I think it's fine but I certainly have heard the bad reveiws. We in Missoula would welcome any assistance in the planning, promotion and staging of the event. Some of our classmates are on a tight budget and we don't want to price ourselves so high some will not come for that reason. God only knows we have a hard enough time getting some of them to attend. I know that Nooney has worked his butt off in prior years and his secretary has spent hours on the details. Hopefully his health will remain good and his energy will remain at a high level --- the Good Lord willing.

Bill Ottem always has a good idea for the reunions. He coined the last one "Stay Alive for 55" AFN, Dite

MCHS CLASS OF 48

http://www.mchs48.netfirms.com/

Dear Classmates,

At last our blog is mounted. We will create a link with our website that Betty Jean Lindberg McSloy's son, Craig Cooper, developed three years ago. I am posting some exchanges received over the past couple months. Feel free to reply via this blog, which should work on its own with no more intervention by your editor. Pat Van Vorous, Betty Jean and I meet for coffee every few months because we got reacquainted at our 55th anniversary, and we hope others in Washington might join us. We enjoy each other's company and welcome you as classmates. Being from Missoula and raised in the Depression sets us apart from most folks on I-5 or owner/managers/employees of Costco, Boeing, or Microsoft. We're starting to discuss what would interest us in our 60th anniversary reunion, so Stay Frisky to Sixty! Add your thoughts.

If you can't make it here in the shadow of America's next great tsunami, then join in the blog to talk about whatever's on your mind that may relate to the rest of us.

John, Pat & Betty jean