Whose big idea was it to write a reunion book?

Whose big idea was it to write a reunion book?

In September 2017, three of the six BROLRA cousins were together for a mini-reunion when someone got the big idea to write a book for the next reunion. Sounded like a walk in the park, so I volunteered to be the editor and get it together. Eight months later the finished product came off the press, two months before our July 2018 reunion.

The BROLRA Book (cover)

To explain, six female cousins from three different families and three states started a club about 66 years ago in a Missouri basement where we huddled fearfully because of a lightning storm outside. When the idea of starting a club was hatched, we took two letters from each of our last names and made our very exclusive club name. BR from Brassfield + OL from Boltz + RA from Ray = BROLRA with a long “a” sound at the end. I could go on, but you’d have to read the reunion book to get the whole story.

In case your reunion wants to create a book, this is what I learned.

Decide who will contribute and make sure they are up for the task. In our case, we are six female first cousins. We have been divided by distance and time, but united by having signed our names in blood during that first childhood meeting. Each cousin volunteered to write her memories of two or three of the fifteen tri-annual reunions we’ve had since 1976.

Decide on a goal. Our goal was to put all the memories of past reunions into a book for posterity and make a copy for each family. Some families might choose a different goal like a family history or a written profile of each family member with individual photos.

Set guidelines and be specific. I asked each one to limit herself to three typed pages in Cambria 12 font. But I forgot to say whether that was for each reunion or total. Not everyone followed the guidelines, but the editor has privileges.

Set a deadline. The deadline was Christmas. That would give me at least six months to put everything together, edit, insert photos, and have it printed. I knew it wouldn’t take that long, but I wanted plenty of wiggle room in my busy schedule. Fortunately, all the cousins are good writers and over-achievers, so all the pages arrived on time. No one wanted that hanging over her head for Christmas, so most were early. The BROLRA Book (cover)

Pages from the BROLRA Book

The BROLRA cousins today. Oldest to youngest (l to r) Zana (Boltz) Allen, Donna (Ray) Eames, Karen (Brassfield) Robertson, Betty (Boltz) Shell, Linda (Brassfield) Lev, Carolyn (Ray) Craig.

Assign someone to collect all the group photos. One of the cousins volunteered to get the pictures together. It would have taken me weeks to go through all my albums ripping out photos, because I haven’t kept them in separate books. She sent a photo of the six of us and a total group photo for every reunion since 1976.

Another cousin took on the job to scan all the photos into one file to send to the editor. Photos were in one file on Google Docs. It took a couple tries to get them into a form I could manipulate, and when it finally worked, it was slick.

Add some fluff. I added some humor, poetry by a clever aunt who used to memorialize each reunion in rhyme, various significant letters, minutes of BROLRA meetings, and a bit of twisted history. Every reunion featured a photo of the six BROLRA girls and a whole family photo, which has grown from 27 to 81. With the help of my daughter-in-law, we added the family tree at the end.

Captions for photos. Some photos lent themselves to funny captions and comments. I threw in a few random pictures, but color photos can make the book quite expensive. I would have loved to add hundreds of action photos of our famous BROLRA Olympics and Talent Shows, but the price was soaring.

Decide how the books will be printed. This is where I made my biggest mistake. I know a printer who is a fan of mine, and he has always cut me a deal. After sending the whole manuscript to said printer and driving 80 miles to meet with him, I discovered my fan had sold the business and I was dealing with a new owner. With all the colored pages, it was quite expensive and I wonder if I should have tried other resources, such as Kinko’s, Google Docs, Create Space, ShutterFly or Facebook. There are many choices, so choose what works best for your group. Most of my cousins wanted hard copies and were willing to pay the price rather than just see it on Facebook.

Decide how to deliver the finished product. Originally, I was going to ship the finished copies, but we planned to drive to the reunion, so we packed them up and delivered them at the opening dinner. Shipping would have added to the expense.

The biggest obstacle: I was asking women who are now 70-79 years old to remember back through a span of 42 years. We are all amateur photographers, so revisiting the photos helped bring back the memories. If we were a little off in our remembering, the younger generation will never know … and neither will we.

Reported by Karen Robertson, Wildomar, California.