Day: May 9, 2022

Brian Donovan

Traditions Lost – The Eagle

Traditions are nice, maybe not always essential, to be maintained. It is also nice to evolve. Sometimes they just fade away. By virtue of working on this website, I have had an opportunity to see most of Wayne Central’s Yearbooks (72 so far). I have around 26 myself. We have a page on the website of all (except a couple) of the yearbook covers. The Wayne Central yearbook has a title “The Eagle”. The early ones, it was prominently displayed on the cover. After about 5 years, for unknown reasons, it was shortened to “Eagle”. Sometimes, the name did not appear on the cover, other times an Eagle was depicted on the cover.

In the 50s and 60s, often the yearbook had a visual theme, with artwork, graphics, font. Starting in the late 80’s, themes were appearing again, but now with the theme given a name, like “Climbing Life’s Ladders” or “On the Move”. Which is OK, but now often replacing “The Eagle” or “Eagle” on the cover. Some still depicted an Eagle on the cover, some not. Themes seem predominate in the 1990s for many years after. In 2018, 2019, 2020, they just say “Wayne Eagles” on the cover (very nice appearing covers), which is not the name of the yearbook, it is the name of our sports teams.

I’m sure the student yearbook staff putting yearbooks together is a lot of thankless work, doing something they never have done before. I would hope a yearbook advisor would be aware of what the yearbook name is supposed to be.

I like the themes and some are very clever. It seems like it would be easy to include “The Eagle” or “Eagle” on the cover and still have a theme. Just a suggestion.

Posted in Uncategorized
Brian Donovan

Alumni Directory Restored

For those who are interested –

Over the last few weeks, effort has been put into creating and restoring the Alumni Directory. Initially, the archived version from 2016 was made available. Then a new user registration system was added. Finally, the two were merged together after some considerable effort.

One significant change was to go to a standard First Name, (Maiden Name), Last Name format for Alumnae who have taken their spouses last name. The directory is sorted by last name now.

Another was to remove the ability to contact classmates via this site. It was never used much, and there are always privacy concerns. This is one (of many) reasons the directory was not continued after 2016. But there were many people who asked why it wasn’t and could we get it back.

Since the directory has been around for 25 years, there are obviously out-of-date listings. There is some clean-up that can be done, like removing duplicates, etc., but people may want to update their listing. The main issue with merging the old and new directories is the logins, user name, email, and passwords. The new system being used now takes user names. User names were generated automatically during the merge, and likely no one will like them. Luckily, the system also allows logins by email address. There is uncertainty about passwords. In the old directory, probably 50% of the listings were before there was any login system. So those users had no password. Again, those users have had an automatically generated password in the new system to satisfy the requirements of merging.

What does all this mean? If you still have access to the email you originally used prior to 2016 on this site and the password, theoretically you should be able to login. If you just have the email (and you still use it), but don’t remember your password, you should be able to click on the Forgot Password link on the login screen. Theoretically, because it has not been tested.

Or you could just re-register. There will be regular scans looking for duplicates, and older listings will be deleted.

Users who never had a login will have to register here (see main menu). If you don’t care, nothing needs to be done.

There will be an FAQ put together to make some of this info easily available if users want edit or replace their listings.

Posted in Website