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Upper Dublin High School graduates Melinda Wolff and Perry Ritter look through a yearbook as they help organize their class reunion.
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There are some suspicions among the inner circle of people planning the 35th reunion of the Upper Dublin High School Class of 1971 that Perry Ritter works for the CIA.
Not only is he technically not one of their own - Ritter was in the UD class of 1970 - but he's largely responsible for the difficult detective work that helped the Class of 1971 achieve the usually unattainable goal of locating all 344 graduating members of the class.
Ritter and the committee found everybody. That's called batting a thousand, and that's a rarity among reunion committees across the country.
"Perry has just been amazing," said Melinda Wolff of Lower Gwynedd, the admitted "grand poohbah" of the Class of 1971 reunion committee. "We feel like carrying him in on our shoulders, sitting him on a throne and letting everybody kiss his hand."
The class will celebrate its hand-kissing 35th anniversary from 7 to 11 p.m. Friday, Nov. 24, at Normandy Farms in Blue Bell.
Of the 344 graduates, 19 are deceased. Wolff said about 120 classmates are expected to attend the event, along with spouses, teachers and "friends of the class" that could swell the total just short of 200 people come Friday night.
For the record, Ritter, of Lansdale, said he didn't work for the CIA, but that he used to work for the Navy.
"Instead of hunting submarines, I was hunting people," he said. "I didn't do it all myself, I just got some of the harder ones to find. So many people helped us. I guess the whole class deserves the credit."
The effort was 18 months in the planning. Wolff, who had been involved in some capacity with the five previous Class of 1971 reunions, had made contact with class president Bob Kaithern. More contacts started to be made and soon Cindi Muhlrad Fabricant of Arizona and Donna Senopoulos of New Hampshire joined the core group of committee members.
"If you talk to my classmates, they will tell you I am a type A perfectionist," said Wolff. "When I decided to do this, I couldn't just do it halfway."
Ritter saw how much effort was being expended, and got interested.
"It's kind of like a game of 'Clue,' " said Ritter. "It's corny comparing yourself to a real detective, but that's what it became. I even had something I called my 'Cold Case' file. I'd keep looking at it and saying, 'There has got to be something here.' "
Before the advent of the Internet, class reunion committees were doing well if they found around 70 percent of their classmates. Since the Internet, that number has increased to about 80 percent.
Ritter and company used several different methods to find some people. There was the site www.classmates.com, old phonebooks and good old-fashioned networking and detective work.
By January 2006, there were only three class members left to find.
"Neither Perry nor I was satisfied with finding 'most' of the people," said Wolff. "We thought, 'Why not find everybody?' "
"When we got down to three, I really was putting more effort into it than I should have been," said Ritter. "We wanted to find everybody so that we could have bragging rights on the Web site (www.upperdublin1971.com). Maybe that would encourage more people to attend the reunion.
"Part of it was ego. I wanted to prove that we could find everybody."
The last class member located was Joan Dooner. She was last because the committee was looking for the misspelled Joan "Donner."
"I found her visiting her dad in Florida and she was the one I would say was the happiest to be found of any of the people I contacted," said Ritter. "You would have thought I had just told her she had won the lottery she was so thrilled. What a joy it was to talk to her. She is going to attend the reunion."
Both Wolff and Ritter said the experience of trying to locate all classmates was a rewarding one.
"Most of the people were like, 'I can't believe you found me. I didn't even know I was missing,' " said Ritter. "Most of the calls I had lasted between one and two hours, even if I didn't know that person in high school."
"The feedback I got from people was wonderful," said Wolff. "We established new relationships. And the camaraderie that has developed between the committee members and our helpers has just been wonderful. We've developed a very close bond."
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