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Alumni Affairs
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About the Alumni Oriole
This is the unofficial web site of St Mary's alumni. The official
web site of the School is www.sms.ac.in
Origins
In 1995 I visited Jivraj Nazareth (1969) in Australia. The conversation
drifted to Abu, and remarkably, with no beverages to blame it on, we started
to sing from the 1967 operetta Ali Baba and the 40 Black Sheep.
“Tramp tramp tramp,” “Stay ladies stay,” “When Hassarac has the sack.”
The memories came flooding back. We'd caught the Abu bug.
Back then you could type Bombay into an Internet search engine
and get a couple of hits, but Abu didn't bring up anything relevant.
My brother Vivian (1968) had some web space available. We pulled
out old photographs, recalled lyrics of anthems, listed maybe 100 names
in the directory, and in late 1996 launched the SMS web site on AOL.
Within months, word had spread. Alumni around the world were catching
the Abu bug. Aloysius (1951) started to compile a list of addresses.
Br Noel (1979) heard about the site (oops! we hadn't informed the
Brothers) and he had someone key in the rolls of graduating classes since
1914, taking the directory from a couple of hundred to nearly 3000.
Ulysses (1982) sent in about 30 photographs. Marlon (1984) set up
a do-it-yourself registration form. With the increased maintenance
demands, I moved the files to my own domain.
Organization
With growth has come heightened expectations. I've recently had offers
of donations to help finance the site, as well as questions about my powers
of representation, term of office, salary from the Brothers, etc.
Here's the scoop:
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The site hangs off my corporate domain (DGRC.CA),
at no cost. I gratefully decline donations towards site maintenance.
I do solicit contributions in content and effort, directed towards the
interests of alumni or the school.
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My efforts are rewarded by stories of rediscovered friendships and reunions
— the best to date is of cousins (ca 1951) who were separated as children
during WWII, and reunited after about 50 years, through this site, and
by dogged work of dedicated alumni.
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The initiative for the site came from us, not the Brothers. The school
crest and name are used without formal authorization, but it's fair to
suspect we have the Brothers' blessings. The suggestion of fund raising
came from several alumni.
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I claim no authority of any sort, but do exercise reasonable editorial
liberty in determining content.
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As long as this site is considered useful, I'll try to keep it going.
But others should feel free to do a better job, to launch branch pages,
other activities, etc.
How can you contribute?
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Spread the word about the site
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Update the rolls: see Directory
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Send in content: photographs, articles
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Volunteer as a worker bee (more on worker bees)
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Program/host branch pages of special interest — there are already a couple
of other SMS sites, accessible from the Links page. Contribute your
HTML/Java/Perl, photography, design/layout skills, whatever. Send
in your ideas. For example, Marlon Menezes (1984) wrote the script
for on-line registration. Good man! We need more of that.
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