Because TCHS has no comprehensive list of former students (we were stunned, too), TCHS Alumni News is attempting to compile one. Round One is to ask for volunteers who will carefully type the names from each class yearbook — including "camera-shy" and otherwise unlisted students into a spreadsheet and send them to the editors. Our small team does not have enough fingers to do all the needed typing. If you can help, you will be doing fellow alumni a great service.

The first class at TCHS graduated in spring, 1956. We maintain a virtual "Class of 1955" to honor our TC friends who went to Pasadena High School before the formation of TC Unified School District in 1954. Assuming 400 students per year, there are at least 22,000 former students and perhaps 25,000. We'd like to enroll them all, but just making a list will be worth doing.

Prior Efforts

We are aware of the existence of a couple of commercial directories published over the past several decades. Unfortunately they went out of date with the next graduating class and are in any case very error prone.

How to Help

Download our spreadsheet (ZIP file containing Excel and Numbers versions) preformatted with the minimum information we need. It's basically names, class years, gender, etc., plus some optional data if available. If you have questions about content, please write to the editor.

Content

1. Given Name(s), e.g., Robert or Susan Marie.
   
2. High school surname, e.g., Rasmussen or Huang.
   
3. Current Surname(s), e.g., Johnson or Gonzalez or Johnson Gonzalez.
   
4. Nickname (optional).
   
5. Gender, M/F; if unstated, no assumptions will be made.
   
6. Class year; if all same repeat for all or include class year in filename.
   

If the data are correctly entered the system will handle the conventional presentation.

Style

• All names in the spreadsheet should be for a single class year and the filename should reflect that.
  
• Please capitalize names properly.
  
• Hyphenated names are acceptable; no other punctuation or diacriticals like accents, please, as their encoding may not match that of our system; they can be edited in later.
  
• Graduation is not a requirement. Many people write to the editors who attended less than four years, and we happily admit them as members of the website.
  

Once this is all in place, we will be easily able to export lists for other sites, such as the In Memoriam effort at Facebook, which we fear will become ever less manageable as time goes on. The Alumni Roster has modern data management features, is easily edited and has built-in commentary.

We intend to stick by our promise not to spam your mailbox or to share or sell your contact data. Our system is solely for the benefit of the alumni. That said, the cost of running the site is not $zero, so if you cannot help with the compilation effort, you can become a sustaining member for $1 a month, which will help greatly.

And if you're a potential editor,

We are also seeking an obituary editor to work with us on the project as well as class coordinators who will have permissions-based access to correct errors and omissions. We know it's hard to add another activity to your schedules, but once in place the roster will be highly self-sustaining.