GARY STARTED IT!!
I'm not really sure WHICH of the links below got us
started. I am registered at ALL of them....
http://www.Classmates.com
http://www.alumniconnection.org
http://www.asd.com/
http://www.gradfinder.com
http://www.highschoolalumni.com
http://www.NowAndThen.com <----Maybe this one.
http://www.reunited.com
http://www.SchoolNews.com
http://www.Alumni.net
There were only about 10 or 12 Bombers on these
lists when we first started... Most require a password.
ALL those PASSWORDS!!! I keep a 6x9 spiral notebook
next to my computer with all such information.
Gary Behymer (class of '64) -- I call him my "Cyber
Bomber Partner" because we've done ALL this via email
-- Gary started it... He sent me an email with a
picture of a store in Richland that was taken in the
early '40s and asked me if I knew what store it was. I
got out my magnifying glass and decided that it MUST be
C.C.Anderson's and it was... then he sent me ANOTHER
picture... and another...
Gary gathered up all the email addresses for class of
'64 (there were 5 or 6) and would occasionally send
some email to all of us... and he started searching
the internet for others from our class.... and about
that time he also started the FIRST Richland Bomber
Alumni website at http://users.colfax.com/bjangary
{no longer an active site]
In his search process for class of '64 cyber Bombers,
he would occasionally find an email address for an
older or younger sibling of somebody from our class and
that's about the time I started adding EVERY Bomber to
my address book.
The first site I did (July 21, 1997) was one for "64
Missing/R.I.P." and then Gary put up a site with
everybody's email address for class of '64.
Gary was just getting wound up and sent me a URL for
Don Crawford ('64-missing):
http://krookmcsmile.tripod.com/DonaldCrawford.html
{no longer an active site - Don died in 2012, RIP, Don]
The picture that Gary had scanned needed a little help,
so I scanned the picture from my own Columbian and sent
it to Gary... he added it to Don's "missing" page and I
put a link from Don's name on my Missing page to Gary's URL...
Gary began creating a page for EVERY one of our
missing '64 classmates... I scanned all the pictures,
Gary built the sites, and I'd put up a link... we both
became cyber Bombers from hell at that point... every
email address that came across my computer went into my
'address book'... Gary was only keeping addresses for
our own class of '64.
People wanted to know how Gary found all those people
and he sent out an email with all the URLs of the
places he used to find people...
Wednesday
March 18th, 1998 [edited 4/12/02]
From: Gary Behymer ('64)
This page has been done for friends from the past
searching for the same. If you are not from Richland,
disregard the Hanford site, otherwise these addresses
should be of help to you.
A number of people have requested those sites I
use to find friends from the past. Here is a quick
listing and a little about them.
First, see if someone else might know where they
are. Check with parents, brothers, sisters and others
who may have lived next door to them. Find old phone
books to find out what the parents' names were...
I found a friend in the Social Secruity death
Index because I remembered he had the same birthdate
as mine.
Gary's Helpful Sites...
Finding Lost Friends and Classmates
Generally Seeking... It's a Bulletin Board...
You can post all of the missing members
of your CLASS! I did...
Social Security Death Index... Just what it says...
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall Page
Hanford Phone Directory... Many of your friends
may work at Hanford.
The Ultimate White Pages
The Ultimate Email Directory
Meta Crawler... This one combines
several search engines together.
-Gary Behymer ('64)
~~~~~~~~~~~
Google.com wasn't there when we started.
Every step of the way, Gary would send me a CC of just
about everything he did and I did the same.
In early August of '98 Gary found a bunch of
information about the 'letter houses' that the
government built for us in the early 1940s - house
letter, how many were built, when they were built, and
how much they cost). Gary sent the email to class of
'64 and asked me to send it to the other Bombers that I
had in my address book. At the bottom of that now
infamous email, Gary put a note that said "Where did you live?"
August, 1998
Well, Bombers came out of the woodwork to tell us what
kind of house they lived in... since I'd sent the email
to the most Bombers, many sent their response to
me... I'd forward them to Gary... Gary would gather
them all up and put them together in one email... send
it out to class of '64 and ask me to send to the rest
of the Bombers... After 2 or 3 days of that, I
suggested Gary just send me all the stuff and I'd send
it out to EVERYBODY... since I was doing it anyway, it
would save him the trouble of sending everything to
class of '64..
So far we (mostly Gary) have found around 275 with
email from our class of '64 which numbers 430 or so...
I have about 4000 Bombers in my 'address book' --
[in 2018 my address book is approaching 9,000 contacts]
haven't counted in quite some time... who has time to
count them??? Neither Gary nor I knows how many
different web pages we have going right now...
HOW TO GET STARTED FOR YOUR SCHOOL (OR CLASS)
FIRST - Get a FREE web based email address for your
school (or your class)... http://www.yahoo.com is a
good one. Go for something short... makes it easier in
the long run
SECOND - Go to http://www.tripod.com - click the
New Users: SIGN UP box way at the top of the page. Ask
for a 'member name' like RichlandBombers or rhs64 or
AllBombers -- something that fits your school -- the
shorter the better/easier for everyone concerned.
Then start clicking/reading and get a basic page
started. There's LOTS of help from tripod.com for how
to do stuff. You can tweak the web page any time you
want... make it look different... add a different
background or change the background...
Bomber cheers,
Maren Smyth (classes of '63 of '64)
*************************************************