It was way back in 2004. We held it the Friday evening of NHS homecoming in October. It was at the Aetna Fire Hall and the band Club Phred was our musical entertainment. The attendance was less than spectacular. Over the next few years, we tried tweaking it, to see if we could make it a success. We held it at the fire hall, but on different dates. We held it at the Newark Country Club a few times
and tried different dates. Some of those times we broke even, some of those times cost us. We discussed giving up. After some discussion we decided to give it one more try and see if we could come up with a winning formula. We decided to pick a date and location which some said was the unofficial NHS alumni tradition - the weekend after Thanksgiving at the Deer Park. Everyone seemed to be hopping on the Facebook train around that time, so instead of emails, posters around town, and word of mouth, we created a page. The rest is history. The second year we held the event at the Deer Park we had enough money to fund more than half of that school year’s scholarship. The place was PACKED! The event was so popular that we decided to add a Spring All Class Reunion in 2011. While not as well attended as the Fall All Class Reunion, it was a success. The funds raised from 2 successful reunions each year was enough to cover our annual scholarship funds. We were even able to increase the amount awarded and increase the number of scholarships awarded. In 2014 we realized we had become victims of own success and began to consider a new, larger venue for 2015. We held our 11th Annual Fall All Class Reunion at the Newark Country Club. This provided the space we needed for our large number of attendees. It was our most successful reunion to date! We had over 300 folks in attendance including retiring football coach, Butch Simpson. There were A LOT of former football players there that year! In 2019 our Fall All Class Reunion had dwindled to around 100 attendees and we started talking about returning to Deer Park. We also discussed discontinuing our Spring All Class Reunions. Then came 2020, the Covid year. Both the 9th Annual Spring Reunion and the 16th Annual Fall All Class reunion were canceled. Last year, 2021, we returned to the Deer Park for our postponed 16th Annual Fall All Class Reunion. It was wonderful to be face to face again after a lot of time staying inside our own homes. Turnout was better than we expected. By then, there had been many conversations for the officers and board of NHSAA about how to proceed as an organization. Many of us have been actively participating in the NHSAA since it’s rebirth, which stemmed from the 2000 Millennium Reunion. We have worked hard behind the scenes to make it “the well-oiled machine it had become” (as Gail Maclary Chickersky used to say). We were ready to pass the torch. The ONE thing we never perfected was finding new alumni willing to become new active members. So, the officers and board unanimously agreed to “power down” this incarnation of the NHSAA. We crunched a lot of numbers and determined that 2022 would be our final All Class Reunion with our final scholarship distribution set for spring of 2023. We gave it a good run. In 22 years, we have distributed $42,750 in NHSAA Scholarships funded by fundraising (primarily via the All Class Reunions) and donations, and $27,000 in family and estate funded donations. In 2023 we hope to award another $14,000 in scholarships spread among 6 separate awards. That’s a total of $83,750. We will continue to be an active online presence, sharing memories, individual class reunion info, and all NHS related news. We will post on our page (www.facebook.com/NHSYellowJackets/) and on the Alumni tab on the Newark High School website (www.christinak12.org/domain/2007). If there is ever an interest in at least 10 people to “wake up” the NHSAA again, we’ll be here to advise. On behalf of everyone who joined us along this journey, we thank you. Sincerely,
The Newark High School Alumni Association
