Friday Night at The Paramount

For our Friday night event, we'll be meeting on the back patio of the Paramount Bar for a casual evening of socializing and catching up with old friends. The main bar will be open to us as well, but because there may be a band playing that night, it won't be so conducive to conversation inside! There is no cost for this event and there is no need to R.S.V.P.

The Paramount is located at 219 North Santa Fe, and we've reserved the patio at 8:00 p.m. Space outside is limited though, so get to the patio early--but stay as late as you want!

Searching for Ernie Whitaker

A few people have asked how to get in touch with Ernie Whitaker, but unfortunately we don't have an email address for Ernie yet. We found an address for a William E. Whitaker in Goddard, Kansas that might be Ernie, but there was no response when we sent out a postcard to contact him. We sent Ernie a message on Classmates.com, but there was no response via that medium either. There are several Whitakers on Facebook with Salina connections, but none of them are named Ernie. Does anyone know where Ernie lives or works? Is anyone in touch with someone in Ernie's family who might know how to reach him? Drop us a line at salinacentral1990(at)gmail.com if you have any information!

Family Event at the River Festival

Thanks to all of you who voted in our poll to share your preference for our family event location. It looks like the winning option is the Smoky Hill River Festival. This is a great choice and should provide a ton of flexibility for our group. It has food, music, lots of activities for the kids, and also has the nostalgia factor, since most of us have so many memories of going to the Festival as kids. It also incorporates one of the other popular choices--a local park! Although Rolling Hills was another popular option, as it turned out, their group rate wasn't exactly that much better than their regular rate, so it would have ended up being very expensive for those of our classmates with several children.

We'll try to reserve one of the park shelters this week (if any are available) so that we'll have a meeting place where people can eat, watch the kids play, and socialize. Stay tuned for details on the exact times and location!

School Tour

Since several people have expressed an interest in visiting our old stomping grounds, we've scheduled a tour of Central for Saturday morning, June 12, at 10:00. For those of us who haven't been in the building for 20 years, it should be very interesting to see how our high school has (or hasn't) changed during that time. It will be a great time to reminisce with our classmates about all of the hours (and hours and hours and hours) we spent in those classrooms and hallways. We hope everyone will join us! If you're planning on attending, please let us know so we can let the administration know how many of us there will be. Just drop us an email at salinacentral1990(at)gmail.com!

Family Event Ideas

Now that we have our Saturday evening event location secured, it's time to figure out where we want to have our family event. We would likely have this on Saturday afternoon, although we could also do it on Sunday afternoon if that would work better for everyone. Please vote in the poll below and let us know what your preference would be. Be aware that the water park is scheduled to open on May 29, which means it will be brand new at the time of our reunion and likely pretty busy!

We haven't checked with these places to see if they are actually available yet, because we want to narrow it down to just a few before doing so. Feel free to offer other suggestions as well or to leave us comments! Thanks for your participation!

Searching for Matt Shannon

In looking back at the Where Are They Now posts on our blog, you'll notice that we've been predominantly featuring the female members of our class, so this time we've specifically picked out a guy. We don't have much information on Matt, unfortunately. Google searches have turned up tons of Matt and Matthew Shannons all over the place, but none of them appear to be the Matt from our class. The website USSearch.com indicates a least 7 addresses (either current or past) for Matt in Salina, but it won't show any of them. Unfortunately, 411.com doesn't have an address listed for him at all, so maybe he's unlisted or doesn't reside in Salina anymore. Does anyone have any information at all on Matt? Where he works or lives? Email us at salinacentral1990 (at) gmail.com!

Our Main Event

After researching over 25 different potential venues for our main reunion event on June 12, we've finally decided on Martinelli's Little Italy in downtown Salina. Right now we're estimating about 120 classmates and their guests will be attending, and unfortunately, many of the places we were interested in (including the Watson room at the Stiefel and the Scheme) only hold about 100 people. Martinelli's was a great option because they have space for 150, and we won't have to worry about table rental or insurance, which were issues at other locations. They also have a great catering menu with lots of variety!

We're planning a relaxed evening with lots of hors d'oeuvres, music, drinks and socializing! Because Martinelli's is handling the whole event for us and is very reasonably priced, we should be able to keep our costs down to around $25 per person. We'll post all the details here and on the Event Details page as we get everything finalized. We hope to make tickets available for purchase online sometime after the holidays!

If anyone has a great location idea for our more informal event on Friday night, let us know in the comments or at salinacentral1990(at)gmail.com!