Class Roster

There are two ways in which you can get contact information about a member of the class of '61 through this website. One is to go to the class roster. There you will find all of the members of the class of '61 listed in order by their name at the time of graduation. On the roster, some names are underlined and appear in either blue or red. Those are active links. Each active link will take you to additional information about that classmate. If the person's name has changed since graduation, their current name will be given. In most cases, it will give the name that they prefer to be called by, their marital status, the name of their spouse if applicable, their graduation date (January or June), their current occupation, their address (work, home, or both), their e-mail address, telephone number(s), and one or more photos. If they have provided one, a biographical sketch is also available. In the case of a deceased classmate, an obituary may be provided.

E-mail Directory

You may simply be interested in someone's e-mail address and want a more direct way of obtaining it. In that case, you will want to use the e-mail directory. This directory lists everyone in order according to their current name. Those whose last names are now different that at graduation have their former last name in parentheses. If you don't know their current name, you can use your browser's "find" function to search for it. All of the e-mail addresses are active "Mailto:" links. Thus, if your browser is linked to your e-mail function, you only need to click on the e-mail address to begin a new message.

Yahoo!Group

Yahoo provides a free service called Yahoo!Groups. It is a kind of a cross between a chat-room and a list server, with some other services provided as well. If you are a member of our group, you may send e-mail messages to and receive e-mail messages from the group. The group's e-mail address is [email protected]. Any message sent to this address by a group member using their registered e-mail account will be forwarded to every e-mail address on the group's distribution list. The group and the individual members have many options that can affect the message transfer process, but our group defaults provide for these messages to be individually sent to each group member immediately. Unless a group member has selected another delivery option, each message will appear in their mailbox within a few seconds after it is sent.

For those group members who are on-line at any given time, this will work much like a chat-room. When anyone receives a message, they can read it, compose a response, send the response, and have that response read by everyone else almost immediately. In computer lingo, this is "nearly real-time." Thus, people can carry on a regular conversation. For those who are not on-line, the messages build up in their mailbox in the order in which they are sent, waiting to be read later.

Some classmates may want to read all of the conversations but not want to have large numbers of messages building up in their mailbox. If this is the case, they can elect to receive a daily summary instead of individual messages. This is explained more fully elsewhere.

The messages are also stored by the Yahoo server. If you want, you can go the Lansing1961Eastern site and read the past messages that are stored there. There are other things that you can do at that site as well. These include sending (posting) e-mail messages to individuals in the group, uploading pictures or files for others to download, downloading picutres or files that others have uploaded, viewing a list of group members, and changing your personal settings.

Joining the Yahoo!Group

Membership in the Lansing1961Eastern Yahoo!Group is restricted. In general, you must be a member of the Eastern High School class of 1961 (January or June class) to join. Exceptions may be made if you are associated with the class in some way. If you are not a member of the group and want to join, there are two ways to do so. The recommended way to join is to go to the Lansing1961Eastern site and "Register." In this way, you not only request membership in the group, but you also become a registered member of Yahoo and can exercise many options that will otherwise not be available. Another way to join is to send e-mail to [email protected]. If you join in this way without becoming a registered member of Yahoo, all options will be set to the group defaults and you will be unable to change them yourself. In either case, your membership will not become effective until two things happen. First, you will receive an automated e-mail asking you to confirm your request. This is to prevent someone else from signing you up without your permission. Second, your membership must be approved by one of the group moderators. This can take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours but will normally be completed within 24 hours. If you have any problems with this process, you may contact one of the moderators by e-mail. The moderators are:

• Barb (Shassberger) Sleeper
• Roberta (Corbin) Kueneman
• Roberta (Culham) Degen
• Chuck Noble
• Jim McManamey

You will be notified by e-mail when your membership is approved. Once you receive such notification, you may send messages to the group by addressing them to [email protected]. You will also begin to receive messages from the group in accordance with the options you have selected.