Why a Kingman High School web site?
My name is Ed Pulliam (class of '65). Aside from editing the KHS newspaper for one semester, and running around the sidelines at football and basketball games with a camera, and managing to have a GPA that allowed me to graduate, I was pretty much a wallflower at KHS. I am a commercial real estate broker and property manager (shopping centers and office buildings) in Wisconsin. I also own a few Internet businesses.
Here's a short history of our existence on the web.
Sarah Shoemake Solomon (also class of '65), who, before her recent retirement, wrote a column for the Kingman Leader - Courier, wrote in one of her columns that at the July 1, 2000, joint reunion of the classes of 1964, 1965 and 1966, there was a discussion of creating a web site where alumni could reconnect with former classmates.
When I read Sarah's column, I realized that I had the resources (if not really the time) to make this thing happen. After exchanging a couple of emails with Sarah, www.kingmanhigh.homepage.com was born on an advertiser supported web service. When that service went bankrupt, we registered the domain name khsalumni.net and moved to this site.
If this site grows, we're going to need help. Web savvy people who have web authoring software, and experience in uploading to the web are welcome to apply to become co-webmasters. Just email me and we'll discuss your participation in this project.
In November, 2000, Mike Conners ('65) began offering many useful suggestions which have been incorporated into the site. Mike resides in California, so we exchanged a lot of emails about the site. Mike enjoys traveling.
Mike believes that we have an excellent opportunity to build an outstanding KHS alumni community.
In December, 2000, Lanny Gridley ('94) offered his assistance. Lanny has quite a bit of experience in doing web site design work. He had his own small business providing web site hosting and some web design services. He also has designed an alumni web site for his college. It is totally database driven with a completely searchable directory of all alumni that have posted their information. It also offers free web based email to all alumni, a chat room, and more coming soon. Lanny offered to host our little effort on his server, and offer us technical assistance in making our site better and better!
In January, 2005, we switched servers, and our hosting is now provided, still free, by my company, MainStreetWebs.com. Since its inception, our site had been hosted, free of charge, first by Lanny Gridley's company, and later by Delight-Designs, who bought Lanny's hosting business. We thank them both for allowing us the opportunity to have a presence on the Internet these last four years. Now that our company has it's own server, we have transferred the hosting duties.
By midyear, 2007, we have recorded over 1,000 alumni guestbook signers. Not bad, for a small town school in south central Kansas!
We have 750 active web pages, all searchable by keywords.
What we are missing, to keep this web project going, is help from recent graduating classes. The classes of 2005 - 2009 aren't included in the content here, because we don't have access to your yearbooks or other material. If you are a recent graduate of KHS, you can help. Email me at webmaster@khsalumni.net and we'll discuss it.
As of August, 2009, we have 1.146 alumni signed up to the guest book. Unfortunately, the comments from two years ago regarding the classes of 2005 and later are still true. This old guy, who graduated and left Kingman 44 years ago has no access to your high school memories. But you do.
Yearbook photos, and better yet, your own pictures of high school classmates and events could keep this site alive for your graduating class, and those yet to come. Email me at webmaster@khsalumni.net and we'll discuss how you can become involved in this project.