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What's New on The East High Alumni Page


This page provides information about what is new in the design of these pages. Look at specific pages for added content, such as new reunion information, new alumni profiles, etc.

January 19, 2024 - As The East High Alumni Page turns 28 years old today, there is not much new in format, style or policies. That has been generally true the last few years.

January 19, 2023 - It's been a while since anything new, other than routine content updates, has taken place. The East High Alumni Page today notes its 27th anniversary being on-line. For many years, updates were made daily and weekly. Routine updates now are likely to occur only monthly, although important or urgent notices are still posted promptly.
The main change in the past year was to fix the forms used by participants to update or create a new profile. A while back the hosting service blocked the process that was used for many years for those updates. The editor pondered whether to learn a new to him programming language to create new compliant forms or to contract the work out. In November, 2022, this web site began using Google forms to see if that would serve the purpose.

January 19, 2019 - The East High Alumni Page has been on-line for 23 years!
The counter shows that there were 20,549 unique visitors during the year generating 41,113 page views. Since this counter began its count in 2003, we've had 300,037 total visits of which 200,484 were unique visitors.

February 13, 2018 - Effective this date The East High Alumni Page will begin including photographs with obituaries if the published obituary includes a photo. Previously, only photographs of faculty members were posted with obituaries. When The East High Alumni Page first went on the Internet in 1996, most people used dial up connections, which often were too slow to reasonably include photographs with all obituaries which had pictures. Today, the vast majority of those who would access The East High Alumni Page have broadband access, so the limitation is not as prevelant as it once was. As time allows and if the photos were captured, photographs that accompanied published obituaries will be added to the obituaries posted here.

January 19, 2018 - Twenty-two years The East High Alumni Page has been on line brining contact information for schoolmates, news of alumni and of the school. The big news this past year, of course, was the beginning of the transition of East High into a STEM school and on these pages there has been unparralleled coverage of the story.
During the calendar year of 2017:
there were nine new alumni profiles posted (many folks, and almost all recent graduates, have migrated to social media for everyday communication)
there were 17,615 "unique" visitors during the year,
generating 38,779 page views.
Since this software began its count in 2003, we've had 276,168 total visits of which 180,866 were unique visitors.

January 19, 2017 - Today marks 21 years The East High Alumni Page has been on-line. It has become the alumni web site "of record." Social media sites may garner a lot of traffic but finding information after its first blush there can be difficult. So the role of The East High Alumni Page has evolved.
During the calendar year 2016 the site accumulated these statistics:
We had only about 6 new alumni submit profiles during the year giving us a net total number of profiles posted as of December 31, 2016: about 1,715 profiles
2015 unique visitors: 9,193
Avg. pageviews per month: 1,590
Avg. visits per day: Visits per day: 53
Avg. Pageviews per day: 79
Since this software began its count in 2003, we've had 253,414 total visits of which 162,898 were unique visitors.

January 6, 2017 - In recognition of our 21st year on-line, The East High Alumni Page has begun updating the look of its home page. At this point, the changes are in the top section, what might be called the banner. Among the modifications are some alternating views of East High School, and a different presentation of what has been called "special notices." Rather than a scrolling list of links, the special notices are now rotated below the larger East High pictures and rather than being links, a general text link to the "new briefs" page is provided. The primary links to various major sections of our alumni page have been consolidated and now all of them appear as pencils and we've moved those to below the larger East images also. One more new function is the "standard" menu button in the upper left of the home page, which will provide links to a few of our major sections, including the site map (index/table of contents). More changes may be made during this 21st anniversay month if we can get around to it.
The home page in particular, and in a few other places HTML version 5 is being implemented more and more. HTML is the language used to create web pages. The benefit is being able to do more in ways that are compatible with more kinds web browsers. The main drawback is older web browser versions may not be able to display the web page as it is designed but those browser versions are pretty far out of date. The editor hopes you like the new design and find it more functional.
By the way, the actual anniversary date of The East High Alumni Page going on-line is January 19.

October 3, 2016 - A very astute viewer of The East High Alumni Page (my brother) inquired about East High's street address, not having found it on this alumni web site. He said he wanted it in part of his attempt to determine the East High attendance zone. So the address has been added to the top title block of the home page and in the "Building and Campus" section header of the Today's East High page. In addition, a page with a map of the current East High attendance zone has been added to the site. My brother was correct in saying it was difficult to find the East High street address on this web site. It was in some text here and there, but it is not even on the form created by the school for transcript requests. That form was obsolete anyway.

January 19, 2016 - We went on line January 19, 1996. For the past two decades The East High Alumni Page has endeavored to encourage East alumni to stay in contact and our alumni page has brought you news of East High and fellow alumni. It's been a pleasure to get to know many of you.
Now the numbers. For the calendar year 2015:
Total number of profiles posted as of December 31, 2015: about 1,712 profiles posted
2015 unique visitors: 10,301
Avg. pageviews per month: 1,738
Avg. visits per day: Visits per day: 54
Avg. Pageviews per day: 81
Since this software began its count in 2003, we've had 239,508 total visits.
Thank you to our patrons, contributors, and web site visitors.

January 19, 2015 - Another year has come and gone, and The East High Alumni Page continues as does our school. The Class of 2014 received their diplomas from Shelby County Schools, as the surrender of the city schools charter fully took effect and the city school disctirct ceased to exist.
For the calendar year 2014 the web site counter showed The East High Alumni Page getting:
2014 unique visitors: 10,537
Avg. pageviews per month: 1,788
Avg. visits per day: Visits per day: 55
Avg. Pageviews per day: 83
Since this software began its count in 2003, we've had 223,745 total visits.
We thank all those who view our pages and especially appreciate those who send in information about themselves for a profile or information about other East alumni in the news.
May your East High education continue to serve each of you well.

January 19, 2014 - If The East High Alumni Page were a baby, he/she would have graduated from high school by now. Yes, our alumni page has turned 18 years old today. We count some 1,683 alumni profiles posted from 61 of its 63 graduating classes. During the calendar year of 2012 we had 10,002 unique visitors to our site.

May 6, 2013 - The Daily Update & Portal page has been renamed the News Briefs and Portal Page to reflect the reality that the editor is no longer searching news media daily for items to post. A combination of factors has led to the reduced effort to locate news of alumni and the school on a daily basis. The daily task of doing so, after many years, just became an effort the editor was unwilling to continue, especially given that statistics suggest few, if any, web viewers actually checked the page daily. Gathering news items also had become more cumbersome due to subscription and other policies of the largest circulation daily newspaper in Memphis.
When verifiable alumni news or news of the school comes to the editor's attention, efforts will be made to post the information promptly. Input from alumni and other readers is, therefore, more important than ever. If you have news of alumni or the school, please send it to editor@EastHigh.org.
While the title of the page was changed in May, 2013, the actual discontinuance of mandatory daily updates became effective in August, 2012.

January 19, 2013 - Just an entry to note that our alumni web site is 17 years old today, having gone on line January 19, 1996. As of this anniversary, there were approximately 1,662 student profiles posted on the site, 66 faculty profiles, 419 obituaries, 853 sympathy notices, about 473 "full" news stories about alumni or the school, and about 60 news briefs most of which will become full stories on our In the News page eventually. Thank you for your support by visiting our web site, participating by submitting your profile if your an East alumnus and/or letting us know of news of alumni and the school.

 October 31, 2011 - The discusson board links and scroll display have been removed. The Yahoo based discussion board has not had any activity in quite a while.
     August 1, 2011 - The "social networking" feature of The East High Alumni Page, which we called The East High Alumni Page Plus, has been suspended while an evaluation of the product is completed. First provided in November, 2009, it was thought East alumni might like a place to socialize with one another in the social networking structure without exposing themselves to all the security risks associated with sites like Facebook. It appears that thought was incorrect as the site was used very little. The "plus" service is suspended while consideration is given whether there is any value to alumni to continuing it.
      February 15, 2011 - It is always disappointing when we learn that alumni have missed something they wish they would have seen in a timely manner which is posted on The East High Alumni Page. For many years there has been a Daily Update Page (also known as the portal page) with hopes alumni would check it daily to keep up with the latest news of importance to them. In addition, significant news is also provide by a newfeed. However, it seems many alumni do not avail themselves of these sources on a daily basis. Therefore, something new is being tried, a Twitter account that will announce significant updates to The East High Alumni Page. There will not be much detail in the tweets, but enough to let you know what kind of update there is. To use Twitter to be notified of significant updates, follow @EastHighAlumni at Twitter.com. Since this adds more work to an already significant time committment for the editor of The East High Alumni Page, the Twitter announcements will only continue if it appears it is being useful to a good many alumni.
      January 19, 2011 - Wow, has there been nothing new in the past year? Actually, there's been a lot new but one could surmise it has been expected news stuff, like new profiles and news stories. Regardless, here's our annual report. On January 19, 2011, The East High Alumni Page was 15 years old, having gone on the Internet on (or possibly a few days earlier) than January 19, 1996. It's been here for East alumni ever since. On the anniversary, we had 1,582 student profiles posted. There were 66 faculty entries, though only 10 have profiles. Most of the rest are entries made when their deaths were noted. Speaking of deaths, there were 341 obituaries posted as of the anniversary date, which includes both student alumni and faculty alumni. As in all cases where the opportunity has been provided to directly interact, the count has been low. Only 21 people have joined the "facebook like" interactive addition to the site, The East High Alumni Page Plus, even though it has been available for a little longer than a year. In the calendar year 2010, statistics indicate there were 20,965 visits to our alumni web site. Of those, 84.05% used a Windows operating system, 12.25% used Macintosh, 0.82% used an iPhone, 0.67% used a Windows Mobile Application device, 0.46% use Linux, and 0.35% used an Android mobile device. As for browsers used, 67.36% used Internet Explorer, 16.06% used Mozilla (Firefox), 11.5% used an Apple product (Safari), 2.79% used Google's Chrome, and 1.3% used Netscape Navigator. Interestingly, only 0.19% used Opera. Opera is more popular overseas, but it's surprised the editor the count was so low for visitors to our site.
      January 19, 2010 - Can something that's been around for 5,115 days be called new? Well, no, but we do have new participants in the past year, as we note the completion of our 14th year on-line. There is a net addition of 107 new profiles during the past year. The web page counter says there were 15,092 unique visitors to our website during calendar year 2009. That's out of 22,524 people visiting the site. The average viewers per day was 36, and the average number of pages each viewed was 1.59. Probably the biggest change in our alumni website was the addition of the social networking application so people can post things themselves, including pictures, as well as chat live. But that feature is starting slowly, it remains to be seen if it is worth maintaining. As always, the editor thanks those of you who support The East High Alumni Page through contributions, whether of a financial nature, of information, or of participation by having submitted your profile, and those alumni who just come by to read what's new with fellow schoolmates and, perhaps, make contact with some old friends.
      November 4, 2009 - Now open for use by East alumni: an open beta version of our social networking application. Since this is a beta implementation, it's possible data posted may be lost or the whole application discontinued. Your opinions of its value in communicating with fellow alumni are wanted as well as any comments about its technical aspects or your user experience with it. This registration, profiles, memories, etc. are all separate from the main part of The East High Alumni Page, though the editor might choose to move some data to the regular portion of the site. Per our policies, unless otherwise noted, all information you submit is considered available for public release.
      October 25, 2009 - Slight wording changes have been made to the submission and terms of use policy.
     January 19, 2009 - The East High Alumni Page is 13 years old today. We've been on-line continuously since January 19, 1996. We have about 1,405 alumni profiles posted, which we estimate is more than 12% of the graduates of East. As of today there are 5 new profiles awaiting posting at our next update cycle near the end of the month. Surprisingly, our 13 years also means we've been on-line for 1/5 of the time East High has been open. A special slide show was presented on the home page for a while to celebrate our school and our alumni web site. A version of that slide show remains available.
      August 30, 2008 - As an experiment, the editor is beginning a blog called the "Editor's Memo" to communicate some of the our web site's behind the scenes information to fellow alumni. We'll see how it works out. We're letting someone else host the blog so not to create an even greater load on our resources. You can find it at editorsmemo.wordpress.com.
      January 28, 2008 - We have discontinued our "Dedications" page. Instead, deserving faculty and staff members are now included along with alumni in our Hall of Honor. We have also introduced a services page, which, for now, only offers a copy of East High School's Transfer Request Form.
      January 19, 2008 - The East High Alumni Page is 12 years old! It went on line January 19, 1996 and has been on line ever since. To celebrate, two new features are presented:
home movies of East High before it opened in 1948 and on the first day of classes...
and the new version of our Alma Mater is now available along with the old version.
We had so much work to do for the anniversary, we didn't get new profiles posted by that date, however, we'll use the counts from the update of January 21, 2008, as our markers for our 12 year point. At that point we had 1,283 alumni profiles posted, 246 obituaries, 241 sympathy notices (including the sympathy archive), 68 entries on the history page, 293 item on our "In the News..." page, and of course much more. Our counter indicates during the 2007 calendar year we had 22,985 visits to our web site.
     May, 28, 2007 (Memorial Day, USA)- Today we initiate two very special sections. Befitting the day, we are proud to begin a Military Memorial page, to serve as a memorial to East High alumni who gave their lives in service to the United States of America as members of its military. Nominations for this page are welcome. Please see the page for details.
     Recognizing that we also have many alumni who are deserving to be honored who have not been casualties of war, we also on this date are starting an Alumni Hall of Honors. During the next month or so we hope to establish the criteria for and method of selecting alumni for inclusion.
     April 10, 2007 - After becoming concerned some people didn't know about some of the main sections offered by The East High Alumni Page, we have decided to put something of a navigation bar at the top of many of the pages on The East High Alumni Page. It will appear beginning today on most of the class directory pages and we may add it to other pages in the future.
     February 4, 2007 - A minor change in the submission forms has been made to provide a check box if the local (user id) portion of an e-mail address is case sensitive. Internet mailing standards provide for it to be case sensitive, but the same standard also discourages e-mail providers from making it case sensitive to provide interoperability. Since our participants' e-mail addresses are images that have to be read (cannot be clicked upon or copied as text), we have begun to capitalize all e-mail addresses to make them easier to distinguish the character 1 from the character L and to address other readability issues.(unless we are told they are case sensitive).
      January 20, 2007 - We've rearranged the home page, taken away the gray background and added red and gray borders and lines around about. Most of the content is the same, with some wording changes, but the look is quite different. We may not be finished re-working the page. Do you like or dislike our newly arranged home page? Comments are welcome to editor@EastHigh.org. We wish we had had it ready to debut yesterday, the 11th anniversay of our alumni web page. (see below).
     January 19, 2007 - As we are want to do on the anniversary of this web site, we will mark the occasion with some statistics. As of today, the 11th anniversary of The East High Alumni Page, a count indicates we have 1209 student profiles posted, 9 faculty profile entires, 194 obituaries, 162 sympathy notices, about 580 separate web pages, 2559 images (excluding e-mail address images), 1200 e-mail address images, 1 video file, 2 audio files, 245 news items on the "In the News..." page, and 66 entries on "The History East High" page. If you've submitted your profile, news items, obituary information, memory items, elementary section data, pictures, etc., we thank you. If you just browse our pages, which clearly most people do without ever submitting a profile, we appreciate your interest and encourage you to join us by sending us your profile. When we started this web "page" in 1996, search engines showed only about 3 high school alumni sites on the entire web. While there are many today, some outfits making lots of money from it, we don't think there is an alumni web site that matches our accomplishments and participation. East High scores, and wins, again!
      April 27, 2006 - We've found a very early home page of The East High Alumni Page. For fun, and our embarrassment, take a look at what we looked like on January 27, 1996, about eight days after The East High Alumni Page went on-line. Click here to take a look.
      April 20, 2006 - We have added a special dedications page, currently only devoted to four people who guided East High in its early years and created high academic achievement school. We have also discontinued the "in the hospital" page, which was used only once or twice in the nearly 10 years it has been a part of The East High Alumni Page. Should we have hospitalization information to report, we now can use our Daily Update & Portal Page, which did not exist in 1996 when the "in the hospital" page was begun.
      April 17, 2006 - We've implemented a relatively minor structural change to eliminate the frames structure of the "In the news..." section. The main purpose was to discontinue the headlines column, which had became too long and too much trouble.
      April 9, 2006 - What's new is our East Elementary section. For 25 years, East Elementary School was an integral part of the facility known more generally as East High School. In those days, there were no yearbooks for elementary schools and the images and memories, if existent, are spread far and wide. The East High Alumni Page now begins an effort to consolidate those memories and images in a section devoted to East Elementary. We hope those of you who attended, taught at, or have an interest in East Elementary will visit our new section and will help us fill it with facts, recollections, and pictures. Please visit our East Elementary section.
     At the same time as we introduce the East Elementary section, we are phasing out the "Help Find Friends" page. Over the nearly 10 years it has existed it has been used only about a dozen times. The page will remain on the web site for a time, but links from other pages will be removed and we will do not anticipate updating that page in the future.
     January 19, 2006 - Today we observe the 10 year anniversary of The East High Alumni Page being on the Internet. As we do so, we have 1,090 student profiles, probably about 10% of the number who have been graduated from East, 10 faculty profiles, reunion pages for 33 classes, 165 obituaries, 279 sympathy notices, 65 history points, 212 news items, 241 listings of memories, and numerous features and pictures about East, its classes, and alumni. We've come a long way from when our alumni page was a single web page (as evidenced by it's singular title, The East High Alumni PAGE). Our visitor count to our alumni web site runs nearly 40,000 and there have been periods during which visits were not counted. Lots of people have told us about getting in contact with old friends through the postings here and others have said they learned of their class reunions and attended only because of the information listed here. We know from comments made that many more alumni view our web pages than post profiles. We appreciate the participation of those who have posted information, because it is because of them all the others visit, but we're also glad for alumni who visit just to get information or for enjoyment without sending in a profile or reunion information. We encourage their further participation by submitting a profile! Thanks to all who have sent profiles and other information, those who've sponsored pages or donated to the cause, and those promoting the page among other alumni. We'll see what happens to our school, it's students, it's alumni and to our alumni page in the days and years to come. Best wishes to all! -- The editor. [April 27, 2006 - we've posted the home page as it looked on January 27, 1996, take a look.]
     October 16, 2005 - For those of you using RSS aggregators or using web sites that provide RSS aggregator functionally, we've add an RSS feed of urgent news and important notices. Information provided on the RSS feeds will likely remain there for a week. The information usually is available on The East High Alumni Page for a longer period, many times permanently. If you don't have an RSS aggregator but want to utilize that functionally, "my yahoo" (yahoo.com members) and newsgator.com provide that functionality for free with web page based RSS. To subscribe to the RSS feed, add www.EastHigh.org/eastalum.rss to your aggregator or RSS web page.
     August 20, 2005 - With the addition of newly submitted profiles, The East High Alumni Page now offers more than 1000 profiles of alumni, former students, former and current faculty and staff. To be more precise, 1,036 profiles are now posted. Again, our thanks to all those who participate.
     June 17, 2005 - Our ability to provide useful information about deaths and obituaries of alumni and/or members of their families has likely been compromised by a new policy of The Commercial Appeal, Memphis major daily newspaper, which was implemented yesterday. It has decided to treat all obituaries as paid announcements and provide virtually no editorial input to content, editing, and presentation. The East High Alumni Page’s primary source for news of alumni and family deaths is that newspaper and our ability to identify, with some assurance, those with East ties is based on names of relatives and other information in a properly written and presented obituary. So, we expect we will recognize fewer names and be unable to confirm individuals are East associated and, therefore, be unable to relay the information to you. The newspaper's decision is regretted in this office and that disappointment has been communicated to that publication.
     January 29, 2005 - Today we add another associated feature to possibly enhance communications among East alumni: The East High Alumni Blog. A blog, a contraction for Web Log, is much like a discussion board (we have one of those, too). We are implementing the blog with a little differently. Anyone can read it and anyone, after free registration, an join and post messages. Want to check it out? Go to The East High Alumni Blog.
     January 19, 2005 - Today marks the 9th anniversary of The East High Alumni Page. We went on-line with a single web page on this date in 1996. Back then, search engines couldn't find any other local high school alumni pages and only found about 3 or 4 nationally. We celebrate by adding the latest new profiles, bringing our total of profiles on-line to 954. Thanks to all of you who participate by sending profiles, memories, helping us keep the sympathy and obituary sections as up to date as we can, and for reading our pages. Most of all, thanks for keeping in touch with old friends from the good days at East High.
     September 7, 2004 - CBS News top stories (from radio headlines), ABC USA and World headlines were added to the Daily Update & Portal page. This addition was made when we noticed that the newspaper headlines did not report a breaking story as fast as we thought would be beneficial. Broadcasters have always been concerned with rapid reporting whereas the continuous news cycle concept is relatively new for newspapers. Broadcasters, even when publishing to the web, seem to still have the time advantage.
      September 1, 2004 - The home page has been revised to provide scrolling special notices instead of the static notices. To see the scrolling notices, one must be using Internet Explorer version 4 or higher, or Netscape Navigator version 6 or higher, AND must allow active content. Windows XP Service Pack 2 blocks active content by default, but the user is notified and can click on the information bar near the top of the browser and allow the blocked content to be displayed. Alternatively, there is a link to an alternative page which will open the special notices in a separate window.
     January 19, 2003 - The East High Alumni Page has been in existence for 7 years as of today. We pass the anniversary mark with 728 profiles on-line and thousands of visits by alumni and others. We especially thank those of you who participate by placing your profiles on line, helping us with East's history and keeping an eye on current events regarding East and East alumni and letting us know about them. We hope the web site has helped all East alumni who have visited our pages to reconnect with old East friends and good memories.
     June, 2002 - After giving notice in mid May and waiting until mid June for any objections, we finally proceeded to discontinue our "mirror" web site. Ever since we began running two sites in 1997, one of the sites has been either a full mirror or a psudo mirror and has been considered temporary. First, it was simply there as a transition feature when we designated www.EastHigh.org the main site, then we've just had it there as a backup. We believed there was little reason to maintain an on-line backup site and since it was not a true mirror it took extra effort to maintain, we made the decision to discontinue it.
     March 15, 2002 - We had noticed that most profile submissions recently were being sent in by e-mail instead of the web based form. Frequently, people leave out some required information if they send profiles in my e-mail. Today we happened to test web forms on our website and found a problem had developed. They worked through February 5, 2002, we know and we made no changes. Regardless, our web based "registration" form now works again. We regret the inconvenience that must have caused for some people. If you try to use some feature of our alumni web page and it does not work, please let us know so we can try to fix it.
     January, 2002 - On January 19, 2002, The East High Alumni Page will have been on the Internet for 6 years. We have 630 profiles on-line as we go into the week which ends with the anniversary date, with quite a few profiles awaiting posting. Over the past year we've added more streaming video and more history information. During our next year on-line, we hope to provide some downloadable audio/video files of interest and, with luck, get something going for putting East on the National Register of Historic Places. Your participation is appreciated, thank you for visiting our web site. To those of you who have posted profiles, we hope your rewards have been in the renewing of old friendships and perhaps the development of new ones.
     December, 2001 - We are in the process of gradually removing the notifications on class directory pages that "a loss has been reported within the family of a class member." Losses are so widespread the notice has virtually become a permanent fixture on many pages, so it loses its value as a timely notification. We urge alumni to use our Daily Update and Portal page,
www.EastHigh.org/portal.html to get timely reports of losses within families of alumni and other urgent news. One may also look at the sympathy notice page for such losses. The Daily Update and Portal page has the advantage of essentially being a reference point for consolidated items of an urgent nature.
     August 11, 2001 - Today we offer a portal page, [Renamed the Daily Update and Portal page on August 22, 2005] designed to possibly be the home page for your Web browser--the first page it displays when you open it. The primary purpose is to give you a starting point to surf the Web while at the same time making sure urgent news of alumni and of East reaches you promptly. We hope you will consider making our Daily Update and Portal page your browser's home page. Instructions on how to make it the first page you see are available from the portal page itself.
     We have also started a "final" push for volunteers for our effort to put East High on the National Register of Historic Places, as we believe this long delayed project is about to get underway.
     July 31, 2001 - New images of East memorabilia are being added as well as new items in the history sections. These enhancements are being made possible by loans of material to The East High Alumni Page by Steve Canaday ('67) and Betsy Reitz ('68), for which the editor is very grateful. We are sure many East alumni will enjoy the new informaaation and pictures which begin appearing today and, because of the wealth of memorabilia, may be weeks or months before it is all incorporated onto our alumni web page. If you have East memorabilia that will help us document East High or add to our history of the school and would like to make it available to The East High Alumni Page, please contact us at editor@EastHigh.org.
     July 24, 2001 - There is a new e-mail address for The East High Alumni Page. Please address all e-mail to our alumni page to editor@EastHigh.org. The previous address, easthigh@usa.net will be valid only through July 31, 2001. The new address is valid now. The change is being made due to new costs to maintain the old address.
     April 2, 2001 - A new page has been added, the Sympathy Notice Archive page. Current sympathy notices continue to be placed on the "Our Sympathy To . . . " page. After a year we remove those notices. However, we came to believe that there are several good reasons to make those older notices available permanently. So once a notice has been posted for about a year, we are now moving it to the new page. Sympathy notices previously removed from the current listings have been placed on the new page. The only link to the new Sympathy Notice Archive at this time is from the regular sympathy notice page ("Our Sympathy To . . .").
Just to avoid possible confusion, the sympathy notice pages and the obituary page are different pages. Entries on the obituary page, listing only alumni, faculty, and staff remain on that page permanently.
     March 12, 2001 - With the addition of a profile for the Class of 1987 last week (March 3), The East High Alumni Page reached another milestone: the listing of at least one profile for each graduating year of East High School. It took 5 years 1 1/2 months to get this far. If you're an East alumnus and have yet to join us, please consider sending your profile.
     February 19, 2001 - The East High Alumni Page on the World Wide Web marked its 5th anniversary on the Internet January 19, 2001. Due to circumstances beyond the editor's control, he was unable to make special notices on our alumni page at the time. Also, you may note that tonight's updates are the first profile updates since December 31. Again, circumstances did not permit the routine updating of our alumni page.
We would have liked to have noted the number of profiles on our page as of our anniversary. We may go back and determine how many were posted and submitted at that time. However, as of tonight, Feb. 19, 2001, we have 559 profiles on The East High Alumni Page. Thanks to all alumni who are participating.
     November 11, 2000 - We are receiving an increasing number of e-mails as the means for profile submission. However, the posting of those profiles is being delayed by the lack of information we require prior to putting the information on our alumni page. The following items are required: (1)Your first and last names as you were known at East, (2) whether you are a graduate of East, someone who attended East but did not graduate from it (if attendee, please include the year you began and left East), or a current/former Faculty/Staff member, (3) your high school graduation year (not applicable if Faculty/Staff), (4) your e-mail address, and (5) your postal service mailing address. Your postal service mailing address will not be posted on the web page without an explicit and verified request to do so, the requirement is so that we can have a better authentication of those submitting profiles and so that we could find you if you change e-mail addresses (as happens fairly frequently). Please include these required elements in your profile submissions to avoid delay in the posting of your information.
     October 4, 2000 - Over the past few days the main web site of The East High Alumni Page has been moved to new servers. Some functions and pages have to be reconfigured before they are available. We regret the inconvenience.
     In addition, the Web address of www.linkpros.com/ehs is no longer valid for accessing The East High Alumni Page. However, our "mirror" site remains on-line at http://home.mem.net/~welk/easthigh.html .
     September 16, 2000 - With today's posting of new profiles, The East High Alumni Page reaches and exceeds the 500 profiles posted mark, with 505 profiles on our pages. Thanks to all who participate.
     July 22, 2000 - 
We have converted our primary audio files (Fight Song and Alma Mater) to the RealPlayer(TM) streaming audio format, so there is no more waiting to download the audio file in order to listen to them. However, it does require RealPlayer version 8 or later, which available free for downloading at www.real.com. The RealPlayer Basic, version 8, is fine, and it is free, so you don't have to get the RealPlayer Plus, which costs about $30 unless you want the additional features.
     July 1, 2000 - Over the past couple of years, The East High Alumni Page has been offered private donations for its operation for which we had no policy for acceptance. Our only policy for receipts was the sponsorship opportunities program within which the private personal donations did not fit. After considerable thought, we have established a private donation policy allowing us to accept financial support from individuals who wish to provide that kind of help. We thought it both rude and unwise, considering the costs, to continue to return checks to those who sought to donate to our effort. For more information, see our support page. The East High Alumni Page remains free for viewing and alumni and faculty/staff participation.
     June 3, 2000 - We've added the requirement that the registration submission form contain the sender's postal address. We've asked for it for a long time, but did not require it, now we do. This entry is for verification purposes and to find you when your e-mail address changes, the postal address from this entry is not posted in the profile. One must place their postal address in the "profile" section of the registration and further verify they want it posted before we post a physical address.
     April 29, 2000 - Today we introduce a different look to our class directory pages. For several years we have been concerned about the difficulty in reading our white on gray pages, and knew that the red e-mail addresses on the dark gray were virtually impossible to read. Several times we sat down to make changes, but never could bring ourselves to divorce the East High school colors scheme. Besides, we'd never gotten any suggestions for a change. Earlier this year we did get a message from one of our appreciated participants suggesting that especially for those who might have some vision impairments, a color change would be very helpful. We were glad to get the suggestion and posted a test page for all our alumni to see and upon which to comment. As usual, the response was small, but much appreciated. So today, for the class pages, we present the new layout. Primarily, it's a color change: a white background with mostly black text. Not to lose our school colors, though! You'll see them, we think, wherever you are on those pages. We have yet to decide if, when, or how to extend the new color scheme to other pages on our web site, so if you have suggestions about that or about the new look of our class pages, let us know. We hope this makes our alumni page even more useful and enjoyable to you, fellow Mustangs
     March 13, 2000 - We've added a Today's East page to our History Section ("In the beginning..."). It is filled with statistics about today's East High School.
     February 18, 2000 - A proposed new color layout for many of our pages is being shown on a sample page and alumni are being asked for their opinions about the proposed new page. Comments may be sent via e-mail to editor@EastHigh.org.
     February 9, 2000 - We've revised the profile/information submission form to require certain information be included. If the submitter's name as known at East, e-mail address, or class year information is not submitted, he/she will be informed of the error and asked to go back and fill in the missing information and submit the form again. We hope this will avoid delays in posting information by making sure we get the information we need without having to exchange subsequent messages.
     January 19, 2000 - The East High Alumni Page is 4 years old today, having gone on line on the Internet on or about January 19, 1996. We have a nice round number of 400 "profile" submissions posted at this point, a couple of more awaiting posting at our next scheduled upload. Our visitor count stands at 16,793. Over the years we have received many expressions of appreciation for our alumni page and gratifying reports of people reestablishing friendships. (See our
accolades page for some of those comments.) We are glad so many of you are enjoying The East High Alumni Page, wish more who know about it would submit profiles, and thank you for making it a rewarding endeavor to publish.
     January 15, 2000 - It appears our easthigh@usa.net mail account may have been used illegally to send unsolicited e-mail (spam). We received an e-mail message containing an advertisement and it indicated that the message came from easthigh@usa.net. We did not originate or authorize that message, nor did we have any knowledge of it until we received it in our e-mailbox. We have contacted our e-mail service to investigate the circumstances of this apparent illegal activity. We sincerely regret the inconvenience.
     January 8, 2000 - The East High Alumni Page adds a number of recently received profiles to the listings, bringing the total "profile" entries to 400. The appreciative comments from alumni have been most gratifying. We are very glad you enjoy The East High Alumni Page, hope you will continue to visit it frequently, and will strongly encourage fellow alumni to submit a profile. Though for many of us East was part of our lives long ago, it will always be a very important part. The friendships we made there among fellow students and faculty/staff should last a lifetime. Renew old friendships and keep current ones fresh. Stay in contact with one another, and when you have time, visit our alumni web page. Remember what one of our fellow alumni said after being reminded about East by our web page: Good memories do last forever.
     December 26,1999 - Our primary web site has been unreachable from the Internet since December 24, 1999. An upstream provider for Internet access experienced a communications problem and it appears the holiday schedule has taken an undue toll on its ability to remedy the outage. We have been in contact repeatedly with that upstream provider, but so far a fix has not been implemented. Not only will we be pressing to have the immediate problem resolved, but will review our options as to providers and the response they can muster when they have serious problems delivering the services for which they are contracted to deliver. We sincerely regret the inconveniences caused by this problem. Limited functionality and access to our alumni web pages continues through our mirror site, http://home.mem.net/~welk/easthigh.html.
     December, 1999 - We have been remiss in thanking an alumnus for a memorabilia donation to The East High Alumni Page. Ann Macdonald Hultz of the Class of 1959 donated an East High dinner plate that was apparently sold as a fundraiser by a school support group (athletic boosters, PTA, etc.) in the 1950's. On its face the white plate has a drawing of the front of the school in red and lists a brief history of East on the back. Thank you Ann.
     August 3, 1999 - Today we introduce a new feature to The East High Alumni Page. This one is just for fun for individual classes. Our Class Classics pages will be linked to individual class directory pages and will contain text and image memorabilia specific for that class year. As an example, you may want to look at the Class Classics for the Class of 1968. Memories of wider interest to multiple classes will continue to be posted on our Memories page.
     August 3, 1999 - What's not new is more appropriate in this case. The routine weekend updating of profiles scheduled for the weekend of July 31 has been delayed one week. We anticipate adding new profiles and updating old ones for those who sent information the last week of July and the first week of August on or about August 7, 1999. We regret any inconvenience.
     We also note that our posting of the August version of the Mustang Roundup Alumni Edition was delayed until August 3 and regret any inconvenience that may have caused.
     July 1, 1999 - The Mustang Roundup Alumni Edition, which has just been headlines on the home page, expands to a full page of stories about alumni, the school, and the alumni page itself. A "Top Stories & Updates" section remains on the home page.
     May 29,1999 - Today we add our 300th profile on The East High Alumni Page! After going on-line January 19, 1996, it took 1 3/4 years to get our 100th profile. It only took a year more to get another 100 for a total of 200. Now in only about 7 months we have gotten the next 100 profiles. The momentum is growing! If you are an East alumnus and haven't added your profile, come on, join us now. Again, our appreciation for all those participating and the kind words for the alumni page.
     April 24, 1999 - Class of 1951 Participation Impressive - East High's first graduating class, the Class of 1951, did not have the first entry in the first three years of The East High Alumni Page. But once class members learned of our Web site, the response has been very impressive. Class member Billy White took it upon himself to write every classmate for whom he had an address telling them about our alumni page. He and classmate Jerry Nichols followed up making contacts and classmate Beverly Berryhill (Maurine Huggins) tracked down new addresses for those that were "lost" making a lot of calls around the country! The result is that in less than 2 months, 11 class members have joined us on The East High Alumni Page. Every week we hear from more members of the Class of '51. It is a very impressive effort to locate and notify class members and an impressive response from them. Our congratulations and appreciation to Billy White, Jerry Nichols, and Maurine Huggins, and thanks to all of the class members joining us on our Web page. Now that we think about it, an impressive showing is exactly what we should have expected from the first graduating class of East High School!
     February 13, 1999 - We have received and verified reports that America On Line (AOL) sometimes fails to produce our alumni page when a person requests the "address" of www.easthigh.org. Sometimes AOL does produce the page, sometimes it reports that address is non-existent or can't be found. After receiving the report, we tried AOL and found it failed to produce the page. Fifteen minutes later when we tried again, it did produce the Web page. Our servers and Web page remain operational and the problem appears to be related to AOL. We remind those using AOL that another address may be used to get to The East High Alumni Page. The "mirror" site can be reached at http://home.mem.net/~welk/easthigh.html. We regret any inconvenience, but it appears this problem is beyond our control and in the hands of AOL.

     February 13, 1999 - Today we introduce a new motto on The East High Alumni Page home page. As the last comment in her submission for our Memories page, Wanda Toombs ('72) wrote something that fit the motivation for our Web page so well we asked and received permission to use it as a motto. Good memories do last forever. We hope it holds true for you and that our alumni page helps you recall those memories and inspires you to get into contact with those friends who helped create them. Our thanks to Wanda Toombs for capturing the spirit of The East High Alumni Page.
     January 19, 1999 - Three years ago today, The East High Alumni Page went on-line. We thank the 230 people who are participating by posting their profiles and hope even more East alumni are using The East High Alumni Page to make contact with old friends.
     November 11, 1998 - We are pleased to announce that The East High Alumni Page is now available at the URL (address) of www.easthigh.org ! This new address actually went live yesterday, but given normal propagation of the required information over the Internet, announcement was delayed 24 hours. The previous URL's of www.linkpros.com/ehs [editor's note: as of Oct, 2000, www.linkpros.com/ehs is no longer valid] and http://home.mem.net/~welk/easthigh.html still work. Obviously, www.easthigh.org is easier to remember and easier to communicate. We hope it will help you to remember what to tell your fellow alumni when discussing how to reach The East High Alumni Page. (You do mention our alumni page every time you speak with a classmate, don't you? (laughing) You probably do, because if you're the kind to read this far into this "What's new" section, you probably enjoy our alumni page. We appreciate you!)
     October 10, 1998 - Quick note: today The East High Alumni Page added its 200th profile. Thanks to all of you who are participating!
     September 5, 1998 - We have added a search function to our alumni page. We don't think using the search function is the best method to find information on our pages, but it's here if you want to use it. The button is located just below the first line of regular text on the home page.
     June 2, 1998 - On our
In the beginning... page we have added a fuller history of East, but it is a work in progress. In that same section have also added information to The Architecture page. You can expect more on our In the beginning... section in the near future.
     May 17, 1998 - A section honoring the architect of East High School as been added to our "In the beginning..." page. It contains several exterior photographs of the school and solicits information about the design and building of East.
     We also added a "what's new" button near the top of the main page so people could more easily view this page.
     May 2, 1998 - We are pleased to finally expand our "In the beginning" section to include a brief early history of East High School and a message from principal J.P. Snider included in a 1960-61 yearbook. These additions were made available by Lester Goldsmith ('70) and are much appreciated. Anyone with additional materials, pictures, memorabilia are invited to help The East High Alumni Page by submitting those items.
     March 16, 1998 - From 5:17:09 until 10:30:16pm CST outage by a "telephone" company contracted by our Internet Service Provider caused our main site to be off line. Our alternate site remained available, but not all functions and pages are available solely from our "mirror" site, which obviously is not a true mirror but a secondary site. We regret any inconvenience to our readers.
     March 1, 1998 - We have added a section on the main page unabashedly promoting our alumni page and inviting others to join. It links to a page with a few of the many accolades that we have received about our page. This is coupled with an invitation, which we hope will encourage other alumni to join us.
     January 29, 1998 - The discussion board has been discontinued for lack of participation. Should a group of alumni participating on our web page desire a web based message board, let us know and we will take a look at starting the discussion board again.
     January 19, 1998 - As best we can document, January 19 is the date The East High Alumni Page first went on the World Wide Web in 1996. To mark the date and just for a change, we have redesigned the banner on the main page, including the links and alumni headlines that are included in it. Let us know if you like/or hate the new opening look.
     Our current thinking is that we will change the look from time to time, probably rotating among a few different looks, just for something different to see when we surf to our site. So the old look is most likely going to return after a bit of a rest.
     Just for the record, on our anniversary, we had 126 profile entries listed on our alumni page.
     November 22, 1997 - We added a page that tells about free e-mail services that might help alumni keep in contact with each other. We placed a "free e-mail ?" button in the main button bar, and removed the alumni map button from it. An alumni map button remains on the page but in a section of buttons near the bottom of the home page.
     October 12, 1997 - All "What's New" information has been moved to this page, restoring the "About" page to its original purpose.
     Let us briefly celebrate that on this date The East High Alumni Page added its one hundredth "profile." Thanks to everyone who has participated!
     October 6, 1997 - The few remaining "unauthorized" profiles placed on the page by the editor when it was first created have been removed.
     July 5, 1997 - We begin our transition. Over the coming weeks, we will gradually be shifting the focus of our alumni page(s) to the Welch & Associates linkpros.com Web server and away from the home.mem.net server. For a while, both sites will have essentially the same information and functionality. After several weeks, it is anticipated the home.mem.net site will then only refer people to the linkpros.com site. Eventually, the home.mem.net site will probably be discontinued altogether.
     As part of this transition process, several main Web search engines have been notified to link users to our alumni pages that reside on the Welch & Associates Web servers (www.linkpros.com). Other steps are being taken such that many elements of the www.linkpros.com site exceed those available to the home.mem.net... site. We look forward to the increased functionality operating from our own servers will give us, and you.
     Also today and as part of the transition, a counter has been added to the main page of The East High Alumni Page that resides on the Welch & Associate's Web server. Now visits to that page are counted. However, the counts on that page and the mirrored site at http://home.mem.net... are incremented separately. About once a day, the visits to the home.mem.net site will be added to the total for the main page of the Welch & Associates (linkpros.com) site and the grand total, if you will, will be displayed at the Welch & Associates' site (linkpros.com). The count at the home.mem.net site will remain valid only for that page at that site. Also, the separate count from March 8, 1996 until March 28, 1996 is being added to the count on the linkpros.com page.
     July 4, 1997 - Our long dormant (since January, 1996) form for submitting profiles and other information to our alumni page has been activated. This has been made possible by the use of the Welch & Associates Web servers at our "mirror" site. When using the form to submit information, the browser will be directed to the mirror site (if not already there) from which the form may be filled out and submitted. Once the form is submitted, the browser will remain at the mirror site for the remainder of the alumni site session if the embedded links are used for navigation.
     June 16, 1997 - A button has been added on the button bar to provide a link to a list of those entities helping sponsor The East High Alumni Page. This new page explains the opportunities to help support this effort. We have added a few sentences to our Commercial Policies page to reflect the sponsorship possibilities.
     June, 1997 - A mirror site for our alumni pages has been established. It's at www.linkpros.com, the Web site of Welch & Associates. Tentative plans are for the sites to swap roles at some time in the not too distant future, with the www.linkpros.com site becoming the primary site and the home.mem.net/~welk site becoming a copy. Eventually, the home.mem.net/~welk site may be discontinued. The Welch & Associates www.linkpros.com site will give us more opportunities and control with our alumni pages. At the present, the only difference between the pages on the sites is that visitor counting and count display at the new site does not work (due to utilizing a restricted counter on the original site).
     April 17, 1997 - The East High Alumni Page has a new e-mail address: easthigh@usa.net. Mail to the old address, welk@mem.net will still get to us for the foreseeable future.
     April 10, 1997 - We changed the links to individuals on the alphabetical listing page so that when one clicks on those links they are not only taken to the correct class year page, but directly to that individual's profile on that page.
     April 1, 1997 - Our ads in The Memphis Flyer inviting participation on our alumni page have been discontinued.
     December 8, 1996 - We are pleased to report that more than 1000 accesses to The East High Alumni Page have been counted since March 8, 1996, when the first counter was started. You may note the count shown on the page is lower, but dated from later in March, when we changed counters. Adding the two counter totals took us over the 1000 accesses counted mark either late Dec. 7 or early Dec. 8. Of course, the first couple of months and a couple of other periods the count was not incremented when an access occurred, so we're sure the total accesses is really higher. But we are pleased with the counted numbers anyway. As time goes by and more East alumni join us on the internet, we hope more will participate on the page and more of our old friends will access it. And occasionally we get a report of it serving its primary purpose. Just in the past couple of days we received a message from a former East student, who recently discovered our page but who hasn't sent in a profile yet, telling us she made contact with an old classmate found via our page. That's what it's all about! Thanks to all of you for viewing and participating.
     December 5, 1996 - We're moving the history of "What's New" to it's own page (this one) and noting only the most recent changes on the "About" page.
     November 27, 1996 - Access counts were not increased for several days near the end of November due to the Web server provider changing a file without giving notice.
     November 18, 1996 - A recording of our Alma Mater sung at the commencement exercises in 1967 was added to the page, along with a graphic. The quality of the original recording probably was not very good and the reproduction here of the music isn't either. The musical ability of East graduates was better than that reflected by this recording! An additional change was to remove the Commercial Policy statement from the home page and provide a link to it with a button. We sincerely thank Kay Strong Black ('67) for keeping the recording all these years and making it available to our alumni page.
     November 12, 1996 - Added an "In the Hospital" page to report on fellow alumni who are hospitalized. This link will be displayed when we have current reports of alumni in the hospital.
     October 31, 1996 - A few changes have been made to the non-Netscape version of the home page to make it more similar to the Netscape enhanced version. Buttons for most functions have been provided near the top similar to that on the "Netscape enhanced" page to provide the same quick access and to let everyone know what's here. The buttons underwent a cosmetic change, as did some of the buttons on the Netscape enhanced page. We've also altered the text to invite not only former faculty and staff participation in our page, but also current faculty and staff.
     October 26, 1996 - We've changed the button bar just under the opening banner so as to let everyone know what's here and to provide quick access to most areas of The East High Alumni Page. This change is only on the opening page designed for Netscape and compatible browsers, since the button bar is a client side map requiring one of the more enhanced browsers.
     Also added Oct. 26, on a temporary as needed basis, near the bottom of the opening page is an "Our Sympathy to..." link. This will be used when we know of the death of a family member of an East High alumnus.
     October, 1996 - We are having difficulty coordinating web server configurations with the web space provider so that TrueSpeech Internet sound files will play. Therefore, there are currently none of these type sound files on the page and insertion of individual alumni sound files are suspendeded. We will keep working on this with the web server provider.
     October 7, 1996 - Minor design revisions were made to introduce the alumni page logo (large one to the left) and to use it for the "Return to The East High Alumni home page" graphic replacing a photo of the front door area of our school. That picture never did look very good when it was reduced to the size being used. The alumni page logo needs the real East mustang (that was on book covers and decals, etc.), but other than that seems to look okay, especially at the larger size. Anyone have a bookcover or decal from the 1950's or 60's?
     Sept. 28, 1996 - A revision has been made to the way we list those who attended East but did not graduate from there. Their profiles are now listed in a separate section below the graduates of the class year with which they would have graduated. Also, the location map has been revised so to show only the count of alumni (graduates) from each state that have checked in with our web page.
     September 27, 1996 - FYI: Due to a problem with the web site provider, the visitor count to The East High Alumni Page has had to be reset at a value that does not reflect 36 days of activity (August 22 - September 27, 1996).
     September 17, 1996 - Coverage of class reunion plans and activities are now linked by buttons on the homepage. The Class of 1957 is the first to submit information regarding their reunion.
     August 24, 1996 - We added to the home page a "Did you know..." line which links users to an interesting tid-bit about East.
     August 22, 1996 - Want to begin to feel the spirit of the old pep rallies? Take a listen to the East High fight song, accessable from the home page. Better yet, listen to it several times and it will rekindle some high school spirit buried beneath the years gone by! We delayed months putting this on while we searched in vain for actual recordings of the East band and/or pep rallies. If you have any authentic recordings of anything from East, let us know!

The East High Alumni Page goes on-line! We believe The East High Alumni Page went on-line on the World Wide Web on January 19, 1996. Though at the time we did not make it a point to keep the exact date, this is the date of the earliest file for the home page that we can find and we remember posting the page as soon as the first design was complete. The date fits nicely with our firm recollection that the page first went on-line the second or third week of January, 1996.

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