April Update

February 11, 2021

Dear members of the CHS Class of 1971,

I hope this email finds you, your families, and friends well in these unprecedented times. For those of you joining us, welcome. As you will see from prior posts on this website, Sib Amenta, Dorothy Varrichio (Arpino) and I have been working to determine the interest of our classmates in attending a 50th reunion for the Cromwell High School Class of 1971, as well as beginning preparations for such an event. We are providing an update of our progress to this point. We are also inviting those classmates who graduated with us from Nathaniel White Middle School.
• Currently, we have 27 individuals where we have contact information and many have indicated their desire to attend.
• In addition, there are 32 classmates where someone from the 27 above have some form of contact, but they have not submitted their direct contact yet.
• There are another 17 classmates where there is no currently available contact information available.
• For those of you who would like to do so, and haven't already, we would ask that you provide your home address and home and/or cell phone numbers to help us build a database for future reference for the entire class.
• If you plan to bring a guest or significant other, please forward their name so we can get an idea of the numbers attending and correspondingly, the size of the venue we will need.
• Please use my contact information below and feel free to provide it to any of our classmates from CHS or NWMS

Email Address: amentapeter040@gmail.com
Cell Phone: 609-220-2107.

• We are suggesting either Saturday, October 9th or 16th to hold the event. We continue to evaluate potential venues, food selections, and the possibility of entertainment. Certainly, we would appreciate any suggestions you may have.
• If you have any photographs from our time at CHS that you would wish to share for a PowerPoint presentation to be shown that evening, please send them electronically to Peter (please, NO original photos). Also, if you’d like to put together a one slide, PowerPoint collage of your life for the last 50 years, please do so and again send it electronically to Peter. We will also include those slides in the loop to be shown the evening of the event.
• In addition, any photographs from that evening can be sent to Peter to be included in the loop after the event. We would be able then to provide each of our classmates a pdf copy of the entire loop. If anyone would like to bring a guest to take photographs, please let us now. With camera phones, it may not be necessary.
• Of course, we will keep our attention on the Covid pandemic and will develop a contingency plan for the Spring of 2022, if necessary. Let's hope vaccinations ramp up, we can all get significant protection from the virus and hold an in-person, in-door event in the fall.

If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions please do not hesitate to contact Peter.

Best wishes,

Peter Amenta

January 22, 2021

Contact information (who's been contacted, who's missing)

January 16, 2021

Dear Classmates of the Cromwell High School Class of 1971 and our Nathaniel White Middle School classmates who graduated from Mercy, Xavier, and Vinal Tech,

Happy 2021! We hope this email finds you and yours well in the face of the Covid pandemic. As you know, 2021 will mark the 50th anniversary of our graduation from Cromwell High School. Several of us, including Dorothy Varrichio (Arpino), Sib Amenta and me, thought we would see if there was interest from our classmates to celebrate the event. This would be our first reunion in 20 years. Dorothy did a remarkable job on that one in 2001. We will lean heavily on Dorothy's guidance and experience to also make this a memorable event. We are also inviting those students who graduated from Nathaniel White Middle School with us, who then went on to Xavier, Mercy, or Vinal Tech.

The most difficult aspect of these types of efforts is contacting classmates, who are now living throughout the country. We began this effort by posting a notification on the CHS website, CHS Facebook page, and Classmates.com to determine the interest is having this event. Not surprisingly, the most effective methods of contact have been by word of mouth and individual’s social media contacts. To this point we are very encouraged with the response from these various sources.

We have heard from those we’ve spoken with that there is great concern about this terrible pandemic. All of us share those concerns, and though we are hoping to get together next year in the early fall (late September/early October), we must make contingency plans. Hopefully, the vaccines, will be effective to the point of making an in-person, indoor event possible. If a 2021 date is not possible due to the pandemic, we will postpone it to the following spring of 2022. Again, we hope this is not necessary, but we will be prepared to do so.

Since I am not on Facebook or other social media platforms, I will communicate via email and submit the pertinent information on the reunion for posting on the "Cromwell School System Website" (Cromwell.K12.CT.US). Sib and Dorothy will post that same information on their Facebook pages.

To keep you up to date, we are providing the information that we have as of January 16, 2021.

1) As stated, we are continuing our efforts to communicate with as many classmates as possible before we begin making definitive plans. Currently, we have over 45 names of our classmates and non-CHS graduates from the above-listed schools. These names again have come from several of us who had some contacts either personally or via social media. Of those 45, 16 have provided their email address, cell phone and other contact information. Some have provided names of other individuals with whom they remain in contact totaling the above-noted 45 names. We are hoping those remaining individuals known to some of us on this email send their contact information. We are asking that you provide the emails of those individuals, with their permission, or just send them my email (amentapeter040@gmail.com) so that we can determine their interest. If you have contact with anyone else from the class whether or not you believe they were contacted on the reunion, please send them my email. There are about 40 individuals remaining on that list. I will be happy to provide those names individually to you if asked. Over communication is better than lack of communication in these types of efforts.

2) We are planning a date in the fall (late September or early October), but further details, such as place and time, will be forthcoming once we get a number of classmates who wish to attend along with significant others.

3) We are preparing a Power point slide loop of those days back at CHS. We would ask that if you have any photos from that time of the school or school events and would be willing to include them in that loop, please send them to me electronically (via cell or email and no originals please). To this point we have been using photos from the yearbook, photos from our personal collections, and those available from the internet. We would play that on a loop in a portion of the room during the event.

3) We are also asking those of you who would like to create a one slide collage of the last 50 years of your lives to include in the Power point loop. Please send it to me electronically at my email listed above email. We will be happy to provide a PDF of the entire loop after the event. We will also add photos from the reunion itself with your permission for its final distribution after the event.

4) Several of you have indicated a willingness to help with the planning of the reunion. We will take you up on that offer. We recognize that the distance many of us live from the Cromwell/Middletown area makes it a challenge, but we're all used to working remotely. The most valuable task at hand is communication with other classmates.

5) I also received an email from David Butler from the class of ’70. They are floating the idea of having a joint party the night before they celebrate their now pandemic delayed 50th reunion. We are certainly grateful for the invitation to that combined event, but it does present some timing issues. We have chosen, as has the class of 70, to focus our efforts on having our own 50th reunion. Nevertheless, if they would like to have such a get together, we will be happy to send out the information so each person can make their own decision if they would like to attend both.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me at my email address or on my cell (609-220-2107). It’s been fun catching up with a number of the members of the Class of 1971 by phone and email. In summary, let’s get in touch with all our classmates.

Here's to a much better 2021and the great CHS Class of 1971.

Peter Amenta
amentapeter040@gmail.com
609-220-2107