Westwood High Alumni: Check Out Its Alumni Association!

Westwood High Alumni? Did you know that there is a Westwood High Alumni Association? I met with some of their board members at Westwood Day in September. This gave me the chance to interview Wendy (Badger) Lewis, current board president and Westwood High School (WHS) class of 1973.

Patch: As I mentioned at Westwood Day, despite being a WHS alumna I was unaware we had an alumni association. How long has it been around, and what is its history?
Lewis: There has been an alumni association in some form for several decades. The current association was formed in 2003 by a group of 1971 graduates. The Westwood Alumni Association, Inc. was approved as a 501(c)3 in 2009. The board has numbered up to 20 members; currently there are only a handful.

Patch: Your website lists "To organize social events for alumni and Association members" as part of your mission statement. Have any such events taken place, and can you tell me about them?
Lewis: The Association has sponsored a number of social events over the years.

• Reunions. Basically get-togethers at a function hall or restaurant for any alumni from any year. The first couple were well attended. Attendance fell off and we ended up losing money on them, so stopped hosting them.

• Casino Nights. We held two of these as fund raisers for the Scholarship Fund. These were a great success, but the person who organized them left the board (taking most of the information with him).

• A Golf Tournament. Again, held as a fundraiser. This was successful in terms of attendance and money raised, but was a tremendous amount of work. As the board has shrunk, it is difficult to hold large events.

• Dunk Tank. We had a dunk tank at Westwood Day for three years. Teachers were recruited to be dunked. Again, a lot of work for a few people. The Superintendent asked us not to ask teachers again as it was their day off.

Patch: Why should a WHS alum sign up for the directory?
Lewis: The Association maintains a database of alumni. We had several thousand names with contact info in the database. There was a change in officers and the database was lost (by the same person who took the Casino info). We have been building it back up.The database information is not made public. If John Doe emails us, wanting contact info for Jane Smith, we contact Jane, sending her John’s email, letting her know he wants to contact her. It’s up to her to respond to him. When the database gets built up more, we will be emailing out newsletters, hopefully quarterly or at least twice a year. They will be a way to advertise events and make appeals for funds for the Scholarship Fund. We can also email reunion information. There are two ways we can gather contact information. A person signs up or we are given a list from a reunion. The school cannot give us the information. Even addresses are no longer in the yearbooks.

Patch: Looking around your website, it seems as though your association board is composed of alums who have been out of WHS for 20+ years. Has there been any effort to reach out to younger alums?
Lewis: Without having contact information from newer years (after 1995), we have a difficult time recruiting. We have thought about putting a flyer in the All Night Graduation Party gift bag, but have not followed through on it. Any new graduates we have asked about being on the board haven’t been interested. They are on to college, or are just so over high school they don’t want anything to do with it.

Patch: When we spoke, you emphasized the scholarships your organization provides. Could you please talk a little bit about them and how WHS alumni can support them?
Lewis: We have three scholarships available*. That being said, we only have so much money. Some years we have presented all three, last year we only presented one. We have some funds in an investment account and would like to build that up enough so we can just use the interest for scholarships. In the meantime, most of our funds come from donations and sales of merchandise.

When a class has a reunion, members of the board are available to sit at their check-in desk, freeing up class members to enjoy the evening. We always have a donation can at the desk. Sometimes, the class will allow us to do a 50/50 raffle. Some classes have been willing to add a donation line to their registration form. Sometimes, they will donate any left over money after the reunion.

We don’t have much opportunity to sell our merchandise; primarily just at Westwood Day.

Certainly, an appeal in the Westwood Patch could help us. Donations can be made on the website or mailed to PO Box 2556, Westwood, MA 02090.

*The three scholarships are the William Griffin, Class of 1971, Memorial Scholarship; the Westwood High School Alumni Scholarship, and the Westwood High School Alumni Scholarship--child of alumnus.

Photo c/o Wikipedia.