The idea behind the expansion is to highlight in more detail some of the major events regarding East and East alumni. If you have news about yourself or know of news about a fellow alumnus, send it to us. In many cases, further details on the same subject will still be found on other pages within The East High Alumni Page. However, our Web site has grown to have so many pages with various features, new items might be difficult to find so we thought it might be beneficial to highlight the significant news for alumni. Links to more detailed information, if available, will be provided within the text here.

The East High Alumni Page is extremely grateful to Mrs. Lilburne Vollmer for donating a significant amount of important East High memorabilia for preservation and use on our alumni page.
Mrs. Vollmer began teaching at East in 1949, just one year after the school opened and continued until she retired in 1980. She focused on office and business skills and technologies. Many of us learned to type, or as they say now in regards to computers, to "keyboard," from Mrs. Vollmer.
Mrs. Vollmer's donation of East High related materials to The East High Alumni Page is a gracious act of sharing the memories of our high school with all of us. We hope to be able to preserve the material and develop means to make it available in part or whole to all of you in one form or another over time.
Mrs. Vollmer is active on the class reunion circuit for those years she taught.
The administrator of The East High Alumni Page suggested, "alumni might want express an extra bit of appreciation not only for Mrs. Vollmer's long dedicated service to the students of East and her friendship now, but also her contribution to the preservation and the sharing of our history. I know I can't say thank you enough."

It's no secret that most of us are taken back in our minds to the old days when we hear music that was popular as we grew up. For reasons this correspondent cannot always explain, those memories are frequently good ones, even if the music may remind us of times that may have been difficult, like when our steady date broke up with us or we lost the big game.
Until recently, one had to get out the 45 RPM records to hear the popular music of the mid to late 1950's and early 1960's. But since April, a Memphis radio station has been playing those tunes. WOTO, Olive Branch/Memphis, is on the FM dial at 95.7. Its format change was rather dramatic and disheartening for quite a few. Previously the station billed itself as 96X and played "alternative" rock music. For those who were growing up in the 50's and 60's though, the station now seems to be a winner. More than one East alumni has said, "I love it!"
A columnist in The Memphis Flyer criticized the station's format change, claiming Memphis had enough oldies stations. However, that writer seems to have missed the point. While there are stations playing oldies, or "classic rock," none are reaching back to the time period covered by WOTO. In fact, it could be said that most of the oldies stations other than WOTO generally start their playlist in the years at which WOTO stops its music selection. To be sure, WOTO plays early tunes from The Beatles, and it seems the playlist may be weighted toward the 60's, but listeners can also hear songs from the mid 1950's.
It is certainly difficult to relate the nature of station's playlist by listing only a few recordings, but to give a flavor of the station's music, these songs were heard on the station over a few hour period: Shop Around, This Magic Moment, Palisades Park, Dream Lover, No Particular Place to Go, Stay (just a bit longer), Do You Believe in Magic, Twist and Shout (The Beatles version, an older version is also played), What a Wonderful World, Sugar Shack, Say a Little Prayer for Me, He Don't Love You (Like I Love You), Breaking Up is Hard to Do, Rip Tide, Keep On Dancing (The Gentrys, a Memphis band!!), and Peggy Sue. Our apologies if we got any titles wrong, the station didn't have announcers initially and didn't announce song titles or artists, though they now have added announcing staff, apparently as new staff comes on board. Unfortunately for the announcers, the music is definitely the key to this station's success and it seemed better before there were any disk jockeys.
If you were a student at East in the 1950's and/or 1960's, there's a good chance you'll be delighted by the music the station is playing. A word of caution, WOTO is only a 5,000 watt station, which means it really isn't very strong. According to FCC maps available to us, the transmission tower is in southeast Shelby County. If your reception isn't very good, you may need an external antenna (or to pull the antenna on your car out longer).