About this Website

The reader is viewing the Retired Western Union Employees Association's new web site, WesternUnionRetirees.com.  This site is the second sponsored by this Association and is among four that have been dedicated to serving the Company's past and present employees.

The first official RWUEA website was established in 1998 under the sponsorship of board member Harold Mills.  To get started, Harold loaned the Association a portion of his personal site to use as its own.  The address of the RWUEA official site was first published in the third quarter 1998 newsletter as http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/haroldmills (now defunct).

In April, 2001 a retiree who had lived in Buffalo, NY, Richard Utz, established a separate web site of his own that also served Western Union retirees.  That site, having the address WesternUnionAlumni.com, was created with the assistance of another retiree in the Buffalo area, Floyd Baker, who used a web design software package called Fusion to design the shell.  Fusion is marketed by the organization NetObjects, and Dick's site was initially hosted by an Internet service provider, OnLineMedia, both also in the Buffalo area.

Harold Mills passed away in 2001.  Board member Wally May then worked with Floyd Baker using the Fusion design package as the software and OnLineMedia as the host to establish the second version of the Association's website which operated until recently under the address RWUEA.com.  Shortly afterwards, Floyd became involved in other projects and was unable to provide regular assistance in maintaining either site.  At that time, Harold Smith, a friend of Dick's living in Rochester, NY volunteered to become Dick's webmaster using new user-friendly software, and in October 2003, Dick moved the hosting of his website from Bullaro to Netpass in Orlando, FL.  The WesternUnionAlumni.com website is still functioning and can be viewed by clicking on the box above left.

The Association's web site focuses rather narrowly on the organization's affairs.  Dick Utz's site is broader in content and contains considerable technical and historical information.  Another, older website, Auodin.net, was dedicated to the affairs of those who worked on the Autodin system.  Autodin, a store and forward record message communication system designed by Western Union in the 1960s and operated by Western Union for the military, was recently shut down, and the website ceased operation early in 2004.  Considerable information of historical value was lost.  Suggestions as to how it can be recovered are welcomed.

The RWUEA.com site had a distinctive style and represented the state of the art when created, but it fell into disrepair in recent years and had little to offer members.  Wally May did his best with it, but was severely hampered by the lack of readily available skilled assistance and by illness, first his own and then by the long illness and death of his wife Gloria.  Improvements were obviously needed, but none of those involved in maintaining it had mastered the Fusion language, for which little published information is available, and it was impossible to change the site's organization or to install new material in a coherent manner without resorting to the aid of a programmer in a distant city. Also, Wally has said that he had difficulty finding material to post on the site, and he therefore sometimes copied material from the newsletter after it was distributed.  That material was already old when put there and was of little or no interest to members who had already seen it.

Given those circumstances, in May, 2004 the Board authorized rebuilding the Association's site using a state-of-the-art web design programming package with the help of a firm specializing in web design.  It was believed that some board members could become sufficiently competent in the new software to provide day-to-day maintenance of the site, and that special needs that will occur from time to time could be served by obtaining technical assistance from the contractor on a continuing, but as-needed, basis.  Except for the directory, which was kept up to date, maintenance of the old site was discontinued when the rebuilding effort had gotten to the point where the new site was partially functional.  The RWUEA.com site will soon be closed down, if that has not already occurred..

While still a work in progress, this site is the result of that rebuilding effort.

The primary goal has been to recreate the functions performed by the old site while making obviously needed functional improvements.  Wally said that the most important functional improvement needed was to an assortment of pockets having distinct labels into which a variety of kinds of information could be installed.  The organization of this site was developed with that thought in mind.  Sections were created with the intent of mimicking much of what was in the old, except that pages that appeared to have been unused, such as those for classifieds and ham radio, were dropped, and sections that were overly broad were divided, sometimes several into several parts.

As much of the content of the old site as was worth salvaging was transferred over to the new site.  The substantive content of the site is now organized into these subjects:   (a) A directory of member's street and e-mail addresses, (b) a calendar of coming events, (c) listings of former Company employees who have recently passed away, including brief obituaries if available, and of new members in the organization, (d) news from other regional Western Union retiree organizations, (e) news about individual members, and (f) information  pertaining to the affairs of the organization, including a listing of board members, minutes of Board meetings, and financial information.  The new address code was adopted that includes the phrase "Western Union" with the hope that doing so will lead to increased traffic.  The Western Union name is widely recognized, whereas the RWUEA acronym conveys nothing of the site's affiliation with that company. 

Coding of the shell was performed by Path Computer Systems, a local organization specializing in web design, using Microsoft's FrontPage software.  The site is hosted at Path's facility in Tuxedo, NY.  It's website can be seen at http://PathComputer.com.   Something of the style of the RWUEA site was carried over into the new site, but contemporary methods were employed, with clicksites to other pages located across the top and at the top-left of a page, inclusion of a "site map", which in an earlier time would be called a "table of contents", and other web building techniques now in vogue.  Some graphics of historical relevance to the Company's have been posted, and more will be installed as the technical competence required is developed.

It is hoped that this site is found to be informative and useful.   Suggestions for improvement are welcome and can be addressed to our President, John Skelton at crafty@ptd.net or to any other member of the RWUEA Board.

Posted 12/23/04, revised 12/30/04,1/3/05, 1/30/06

Website designed and hosted by Path Computer Systems