Dear Classmates & Milne Alumni,

Judy Koblintz Madnick, 1961, and I have been working on the not-to-be published Milne Alumni Contact Directory since the last newsletter. We decided we would work to complete this directory and to hold off on the Milne Heritage Project that I outlined in the August newsletter. The Heritage Project will be resumed at a later date, but will continue to be under discussion.

Judy, the Milne website creator and webmaster, has set up a new database on her computer that will standardize all the contact information that both she and I have collected to this point for all Milne Alumni, and with it we will be able to sort it by names, class year, city and state, and other categories. We will also be able to make lists of names and telephone numbers and names and e-mail addresses for Class Contacts to communicate with their classmates for reunions or individual class newsletters.

Although we will have the street and P.O. addresses of Milne Alumni, we do not have plans to send out mailings through the U.S. Postal Service due to the cost involved. It is our hope that we will have as many e-mail addresses listed as possible. Along with the Milne website, this monthly newsletter will continue as our means of communicating with you.

This contact directory in progress will not be available on the website or shared with any commercial vendor. On request, we will forward the class roster information to an identified Class Contact or class member who wishes to contact his or her classmates. We will also forward the Milne Alumni contact directory to the University for their database records and eventually for the archives. (Update: Furnishing the contact directory to the University will be dependent upon agreed-upon limitations to the use of the database.)

We are prepared to keep this contact directory up to date and would like to have your help with this. If you move or change your e-mail address, please let Judy know through the Milne website. Most of the Internet search engines now list our website when "Milne" or "The Milne School" as key terms are entered into the search field.

As Judy's area of involvement will be primarily setting up and maintaining the contact directory, I will be involved in researching the class years, locating missing classmates, and then forwarding the information to Judy. I may be contacting some of you to inquire if you know where missing individuals might be located.

We are focusing on the years from the late 1930s to the Class of 1977, and we will include the deceased in this directory, with the last known address if available. (Update: It was later decided that the deceased will not be included in the directory; however, comparing the directory with the Web class lists will help alumni determine whether a classmate is missing or deceased, since the "deceased" designation is included in the Web class lists.)

Judy will have the following contact directory information categories for the database, in addition to Title, Name and Address: Business phone, Home phone, Cell phone, FAX, Pager, E-mail, Website, Spouse/Partner, and Class Year, when and if applicable. We respect your decision to make specific information part of the directory, and if you wish to review what we have listed for you, please contact Judy.

We will be listing by Milne last names as we have done with the directories already on the Milne website. We use the full names as they listed in the yearbooks or in archive materials, when available. We prefer to use middle names, as they are helpful in locating individuals online and also when there are multiples of the same first and last names in the directory. We understand you may not use your middle name, but with the thousands of names in our Milne alumni directories, we would like to keep them listed. If you have a married name that you wish to add or remove, we will be glad to make the change.

We hope to be able to help all the missing class years without an identified class contact reconnect with the rest of us. There are a number of class years for which we still need class contacts, and they are posted on the Milne website at https://www.albany.edu/~milne/ClassContacts.shtml.

The year 2007 will bring the Class Years 1937, 1947, 1957, 1967, 1977, and 1942, 1952, 1962, and 1972 into their reunions year of: 70, 60, 50, 40, & 30th, and 65, 55, 45, & 35th. If you are scheduling a fifth-year reunion for your class, please let us know and we may be able to help you get in contact with your classmates.

We have heard from some Milne Alumni regarding a yearly small-scale reunion open to all class years , and Judy and I are investigating this possibility. We will let you know more about this either individually or in the next monthly newsletter.

Please let me know your thoughts on this newsletter, its contents, or any other Milne-related topic you are interested in.

I hope you are having a good Fall so far.

Thank you.

Best wishes,

Mary Welch, '71

For contact information, see the Milne Alumni homepage: www.albany.edu/~milne/