Kennedy High alumni post all yearbooks on website

Merokean Beth Josephson graduated from John F. Kennedy High School in Bellmore in 1979. Her high-school-sweetheart husband, Maury, finished his Kennedy career in 1978, and their daughter Leanne graduated from JFK in June 2012. Thanks to their alma mater’s alumni association, the Josephsons can now find one another’s yearbooks on the web.

Bellmore JFK Alumni, Inc., the Kennedy High School alumni association, has made all yearbooks produced since 1967 available on its new website, bellmorejfkalumni.org.

Ronald Steiger, the alumni group’s public relations director and president of the class of 1972, said the website’s launch means all Kennedy graduates can now view their yearbooks online.

Kennedy graduates who pay their membership dues to join Bellmore JFK Alumni, Inc. can access the yearbooks and other features of the site’s member area. Steiger said Kennedy is one of only six high schools in the nation to have all of its yearbooks available online.

Steiger, who spent much of his career in the publishing industry, said the 46 yearbooks were scanned in color by a company near Peekskill, N.Y. About 30 of the yearbooks, which average 225 pages long, were borrowed from the Merrick and Bellmore libraries.

“It’s very difficult to get yearbooks going back to 1967,” he said. “It was an extensive, time-consuming and expensive project, but we’ve been getting a phenomenal response.”

The current Kennedy principal, Lorraine Poppe, said the availability of the yearbooks allows older and younger graduates, teachers and others to delve into the school’s history.

“They’re a wonderful resource,” she said. “It’s wonderful that members of the community feel so dedicated to the school. It shows how strongly people feel about the educational program at JFK.”

Dr. Gary Morganstern, a 1973 Kennedy graduate and dentist with a practice in Merrick, is president and one of the founding members of Bellmore JFK Alumni, Inc. He said the group is ecstatic about the launch of bellmorejfkalumni.org.

Morganstern said members were excited that they could look at their yearbooks online, and he said he hopes different generations of alumni will learn about one another through the alumni website.