Revamped Website Helps Loved Ones Remember Wantagh HS Alum

WANTAGH, NY — A new, revamped website aims to help friends and families remember members of the Wantagh High School family who have passed away. About 1,400 names of former students, teachers and other faculty members appear on the Wantagh High School Memorial website, which is dedicated to deceased alumni. The names begin with the class of 1956, with the most recent entry coming in 2014.

The new site is a continuation and update over the first iteration, known as the Wantagh High School "Virtual Memorial." The original site was created and managed by Mindye Kahn-Brunner for nearly two decades.

"She's the heart and soul of it," Glenn Strachan, who graduated in 1974 and designed the new site, told Patch on Monday. "I'm just the cold, technical guy."

Kahn-Brunner came up with the idea after joining classmates.com in 1999. She thought it was "the coolest thing" to see where people ended up whom she hadn't seen in years.

"I'm a very, very nostalgic person," she told Patch. "Whatever happened to so-and-so, I'm all about that."

At the time, 390 alumni were listed on the site, she wrote on the original memorial page. As more people joined the message board, she noticed a recurring theme: people kept asking what happened to classmates they hadn't seen in years.

"Each time I went into the site to check if any new people were listed, I would think of the people who were gone and who would never be listed there," Kahn-Brunner wrote.

She started a discussion area on the board meant for those who had died. But in 2001, Kahn-Brunner created her own virtual memorial site after the classmates site began restricting posting privileges to paying members

What began with just 10 names grew to include hundreds more over the years. When people emailed her saying another alum had died, Kahn-Brunner manually updated the site, doing so every few months.

In recent years, she noticed the site, which costs about $11 a month to stay up, had become outdated. She wanted it modernized and more user-friendly. People ought to be able to search by their graduating years.

Plus, she isn't getting any younger.

"I'm 62," she said. "Somebody's going to have to put me on that site someday."

So she reached out to Strachan, who is much more well-versed in tech.

He initially took an interest in the project following a multi-year reunion that he and Kahn-Brunner helped organize in 2000. About 2,400 alumni and faculty members from the classes of 1956 through 2000 attend. At the event, attendees wrote the names of their deceased classmates and coworkers on a piece of brown paper stretching about 40 feet.

During a 2015 visit to Burma, Strachan visited an American cemetery to see a gravestone belonging to the father of his half-brother, who was shot down during World War II. As he looked at the grave, he came to a realization — know one knows the people buried there.

"Nobody flies to Burma and sees those graves," he said. "It dawned on me that it would be great on our site if people had pictures. That's why I took it over."

Over the years, Strachan has been digitizing four decades worth of yearbooks. He knew he wanted to combine the faces with the names that people were adding to the site, so he outlined a design for a new, database-driven site and hired out the work. The new site, which went live in June, aims to make adding new people easier. While people used to have to email Kahn-Brunner to add their loved ones, people now type in the names and information of the person who died. All Strachan has to do is approve the addition.

While it might sound simple, it isn't.

He has to verify the person actually went to the school by digging through yearbooks, then has to verify the same person died. He does this by reaching out to members of the same class and having them help.

The new site makes some navigational improvements and allows visitors to download the yearbooks. They can also search for individuals or for a particular year.

"It's something we've done out of love and service to the town," said Strachan.

Strachan also launched what he calls a face project, where he tries to match faces to those who died.

"I just want to make sure people have a face," he said. "A name is one thing. You go to cemeteries and you see names, but it doesn't do anything for you. For me putting faces on people, really upped the memorial."

Strachan hopes a Facebook page dedicated to the memorial will compliment the new site. The page has grown about 250 followers since the beginning of July.

"We're trying to not put in pictures," he said. "People can talk about things on the Facebook page, but we want them to find people on the memorial page."

People often thank Kahn-Brunner and Strachan for their work. He has a brother on the memorial page, so he knows how it feels to have people reach out and remember those who've died.

"It's nice when people see my brother and they say something to me, like 'Oh yeah I remember Merill from high school.'"

As for the old site, it will be discontinued. Kahn-Brunner isn't quite ready to let it go just yet — maybe by December — but the longtime project has become almost an extension of her. And while she loves the new site, she fears the original, a piece of her legacy, might be forgotten.

"The biggest thing that concerns me is the site will eventually drift away into oblivion," she said.