This group is for students who attended Orange Park High School and graduated in 1983.


"Orange Park High graduates stay connected on Web site"
By Beth Reese Cravey

County Line staff writer
January 13, 2001

Richard Adams, a 1971 graduate of Orange Park High School, had such a great time when he and his classmates had their 20th anniversary reunion that he wanted to keep those nostalgic reconnections going all the time.

Adams found a way -- online.

The result is www.ophs.net, a Web site he established for Orange Park High alumni to find and get up to date on each other.

"It was really an idea I had been kicking around for a couple of years. I had such a great time at my 20th reunion and the 30th is coming up soon," said Adams, an artist who lives in Asheville, N.C. "I started out thinking I would just do it for my graduating year, but then decided to expand on that and include all the years.

"It has really been a rewarding experience. There are now over 1,200 registered alumni . . . from all over the world," he said. "They just stumble upon it in the search engines or by word of mouth."

Adams said he hopes to eventually have more than 3,000 of the school's alumni registered, with a graduate from each class in charge of the Web site's section for that particular year.

"That would give that year its own unique touch and not have each year have a cookie-cutter approach. I want each year to be different, just like they were, each with its own set of experiences," Adams said. The class editors who have signed up so far "are doing terrific jobs and putting in lots of hours working on the sites," he said.

The results have been gratifying, as classmates who at one point spent their lives together find one another after having lost touch.

"One of the best things about the site is having people reconnect with each other . . . It has really reunited a lot of people.