Solving a mystery
Sep. 22nd, 2011 02:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fenchurchWhen I was at my grandma's house in Idaho Falls a few weeks ago, one of the things we found while cleaning out her basement was a high school yearbook for Bonneville High School 1973... belonging to someone named Randy Pitman. I had an aunt and uncle who would have been in high school around that time, but they both went to Skyline. My grandma did actually work at Bonneville HS then as a lunch lady (this was back when they actually cooked their own food... from scratch (I loved visiting her at work when I was little, because there were always fresh bread and rolls and fresh cookies or brownies)) and she said that they used to get leftover yearbooks from the school. But this one has that name written on the inside cover and had nine different people sign the book, leaving notes to Randy. So, no real clue why she ended up with it and I couldn't just let the book get tossed or donated without making at least a bit of an effort to track this guy down.
So, I headed out to Bing and ran a search simply for the name. I got a few hits, but most of them were for Randy Pittman (with two Ts). I pretty much randomly selected one of the Randy Pitmans, hunted around a bit until I found an email address and wrote to him. I got an email back within an hour and it turns out that he graduated from high school in Idaho Falls in 1973! Except he went to Skyline High School, not Bonneville.
After backing and forthing, we determine he's NOT the Randy Pitman I'm looking for (and he agreed it was very strange, because there just aren't that many Pitmans around), although he thinks he may vaguely remember my uncle (since they were in the same school at the same time, it's not surprising). What a wild coincidence though! There were two Randy Pitmans attending high school in Idaho Falls at the same time who are apparently not closely related to each other. Very weird!
I've realized now that I probably need to try expanding my search a bit to people named Randall and Randolph... which so far has returned one likely fellow in Boise (who owns the Optometry clinic inside the Costco there that I stop at nearly every time I drive through). No luck finding an email address for him, but I'm thinking of either calling and leaving a message with his staff or using the old fashioned method of snailmail.
Crossposted from my Livejournal
So, I headed out to Bing and ran a search simply for the name. I got a few hits, but most of them were for Randy Pittman (with two Ts). I pretty much randomly selected one of the Randy Pitmans, hunted around a bit until I found an email address and wrote to him. I got an email back within an hour and it turns out that he graduated from high school in Idaho Falls in 1973! Except he went to Skyline High School, not Bonneville.
After backing and forthing, we determine he's NOT the Randy Pitman I'm looking for (and he agreed it was very strange, because there just aren't that many Pitmans around), although he thinks he may vaguely remember my uncle (since they were in the same school at the same time, it's not surprising). What a wild coincidence though! There were two Randy Pitmans attending high school in Idaho Falls at the same time who are apparently not closely related to each other. Very weird!
I've realized now that I probably need to try expanding my search a bit to people named Randall and Randolph... which so far has returned one likely fellow in Boise (who owns the Optometry clinic inside the Costco there that I stop at nearly every time I drive through). No luck finding an email address for him, but I'm thinking of either calling and leaving a message with his staff or using the old fashioned method of snailmail.
Crossposted from my Livejournal
