The idea for this website was originally conceived back in 1993 during the 25th reunion planning stages for the Class of '69 in 1994.  This is long before the Internet was a household commodity!  The original website was created using a simple text editor and manually creating each page and it was all just simple text based 'flat' pages.  The idea was to provide a public means for members of my class, the Class of 1969, to be able to access classmate information.  The initial data was obtained from Dr. Tom Shirley, our former Principal at WHS.

I was also heavily involved in trying to locate missing members of my class.  When I took on this project, of the 752 members of my class 500 were missing!  The search process was arduous.  Many hours were spent searching for and writing letters to people who I thought might be missing classmates.  Again this was long before Google and other internet search engines were common place.  Telephone directories on CD of the whole United States were purchased and scoured.  Literally thousands of long distance phone calls were made trying to track down my classmates.  In the process I went through the old Cats on Call phone books from high school looking for siblings of my missing classmates.  As I gathered this data I decided to expand the scope of the website to include all the alumni that I could have had personal contact with while attending Wheeling.  That would be the Class of 1966 who were the seniors when I was a freshman, through the Class of 1972, who were the freshman when I graduated in 1969.  This represents a total of just over 4,300 students who graduated from WHS.

Eventually I made contact with reunion committees from each of the 7 classes and was able to gain additional contact information.  The more alumni I found, the more alumni I found.  Networking and sharing of information has made this website a useful one for many alumni and friends of alumni.

The greatest joy I have had personally from establishing and maintaining this website is reuniting with old friends from high school and making many new friends with people had only barely known or only knew of during high school.  I've been privileged to share many stories and histories with so many from Wheeling High School.  I'm always amazed at how much was going on back then that I didn't have a clue was happening.  The website has made it possible for several high school sweethearts who had parted and gone their separate ways to reestablish their relationship and several have actually gotten married!

Another thing that I have really enjoyed is helping many of the classes plan their reunions and also attending those reunions.  I have been at the 30th reunions for the classes of '69, '70, '71, and '72.  I also helped plan, advertise, and attended the first All 60's Classes Reunion in August of 2003.  I have also tried to encourage all the alumni to attend Homecoming each year and I have been back each year for Homecoming since 1999.  These events have been a lot of fun, great photo-ops, and a wonderful opportunity to reunite with new and old friends and to hear the retelling of the lies that made each of us infamous in one way or another during high school :-).

In 2003 I was cajoled into adding the class of 1974 to the website. Members of the class of 1971 (Carla and Karen Meyer) had a younger sibling (Paula) in the class of 1974 that asked for help with her 30th reunion.  Naturally I agreed to help.  Then the next class '75 having heard of my offer to help with searches asked me to help with their 30th reunion planning.  So I added the class of  '75.  At that point I just decided to expand the website to include the first decade of graduating classes from WHS, 1966-1976.

There is much more to this story, but I won't bore you with the details. If you'd like to know more, just ask.   If you have stories you'd like to recount and share, please do so.