After high school I kept in touch with some classmates for a few years, but in those days where all we had were long distance phone charges and snail mail, keeping in touch wasn’t as easy as it is today. It was perhaps inevitable that the letters stopped flowing.

Then a few years ago Elco Class of 67 began to find its way back together, partly via social media such as Facebook, and partly through dogged efforts of some of us to sift through web searches and obituaries to find the married names of former classmates.

But then there was Keith. I’m omitting his last name because Keith is of Korean descent and he has the distinction of having a unique combination of first and last name here in the United States. So it turned out to be quite easy to track him down. Keith was among what I guess I’d call my primary circle of friends in high school. He seemed to think so as well, judging by what he wrote on the back of the photo he exchanged with me.

Once I located his address, I fired off a letter to him supplying my phone number, email address, and Facebook page, and waited to hear back.

When I mentioned this on a social media site, fellow classmate Jeff Christ, who had served on the LAPD, told me that he had located Keith in the mid-80s and left a note in his door which went unanswered. But that was then and this was now; perhaps Keith’s outlook on reuniting with former classmates had changed.

But as the days and weeks went by without a reply, it seemed it had not.

Then Saundra O’Reilly (nee Daniels) informed me that Keith was pretty closely related to a family that had gained considerable notoriety on one of those so-called “reality” shows. Maybe that’s why he chose to keep a low profile. And I reflected that in my letter to him I had included a line that went, “And there are a lot of folks on Facebook who are eager to get in touch with you.” That could easily be misinterpreted.

Well, a couple years passed and I noticed that Keith had moved again. In fact he had moved right around the time I sent that letter. This raised a couple possibilities. Perhaps he had never received that letter, but even if he had, maybe now enough time had passed that he might be interested in renewing old acquaintances.

So I fired off another letter, this time with no suggestion that there might be an eager flock of fans waiting to pounce.

Alas, the result was the same.

Now this was six years ago, and I’m wondering if perhaps I should make one more stab at it. After all, you know what they say about the third time.