Classmates,
As we approach our 40th Reunion your class officers have been working hard to update our Class Website, www.usna1978.org. Actually, Matthew Elias, our webmaster, has done all the hard work, so I offer up a hardy “ATTA-BOY” for all his efforts! This email is simply to send a warning order on the coming changes and for what we need you to do.
In the next few days, your class officers will be rolling out an update to our class website, www.usna1978.org. If you have a current email address in your profile on our class website, you will receive an email containing your new user ID and a temporary password that will allow you to create your own password and access the updated website. I will announce in a follow-up class email that you should have received the new user ID/password and that you can logon to the updated class website. If at that time you have not received your user id and temporary password then email the webmaster at webmaster@usna1978.org and he will resend it to you. If you do not have a cu rrent email address on www.usna1978.org, you can email our webmaster and he will send you instructions on how to set up a new user id and password.
Here is a preview of some of the updates to the website we believe you will enjoy:
• On our new Home page you will see three columns, Updates, Letter from the President and Upcoming Events / Highlights.
• On the Home page, beneath the President’s Letter, is where you will enter your user ID and password to sign in. Once you have signed in, you will see Edit Profile, Admin Panel and Logout. Edit profile takes you to your Directory profile where you can update your profile and upload a current photo. The Admin Panel enables everyone to upload photos, news articles and sea stories. The Webmaster will ensure all uploads are on the right page before publishing them.
• Recent updates to the website will be highlighted on the Home page including when classmates update their profile, class news articles and any photos that have been published.
• Additionally, on the Home page an “Upcoming Events / Highlights” section will include not just formal class-wide and Academy events, but also informal class-events like the Fun One Annual Reunion, a classmate’s visit to a city where a group of guys are getting together, Class events at the Annual Boxing Smoker and the different annual golf tournaments the class supports.
• An enhanced Class News section to keep track of each other. Please submit any news articles you see on our class and even yourself so that the rest of the class will be aware.
• Enhanced directory pages for every classmate. In addition to the contact data and paragraph we’ve had in the past, we will also be collecting data on the class for our time at the Academy and while serving in the Fleet. This data will include final major at the Academy, who was a NAPSter or Foundation student, service(s) selected, total years of service, warfare specialties, additional academic degrees and highest rank achieved. Amazingly, this data is not captured at a macro level anywhere and will be used by our class historian to compile the most accurate picture of our Naval Academy class.
• The ability to search and sort the Class Directory individually, geographically and by company.
• World map of the class that plots the addresses in the directory.
• Class Memorial for those who have gone before us.
• Formal and informal histories of the class. Luke Ridenhour, our Class Historian, has compiled a formal history of the class that he will maintain and update as more is known about the class. In addition to that formal history, the ability to collect and display more informal histories of our class, ‘Sea Stories’ might be a better term, where we can collect and share humorous and maybe even not so humorous experiences we’ve had.
• Photo galleries, in addition to our reunions, for our time at the Academy, while serving and since.
• Reunion information and online registration links
• Links to information of interest
• Finally, greatly enhanced security so your contact data is behind a firewall. That security provides for individual user IDs and passwords for everyone.
Fair winds…Glen
Glen Woods
President, USNA Class of 1978