Board agreed to SE USA. Primary focus on Orlando. Secondary: Savannah, Pensacola.
November primary focus
Bob Doerr suggests: Oct 22-25 or Nov 19-22.
Galen Peterson is now part of the events team
Armed Forces Reunions, Inc https://www.armedforcesreunions.com/
Charley Dey
On Sep 24, 2025, MWSA hosted a Write Your Story Class at the Westin Crown Center Hotel, Kansas City, MO. The class ran from 9:30 AM to 3:30 PM with an hour set aside for lunch. The instructors were Ruth Crocker, Jack London, Jim Tritten, and Bob Doerr. Only 5 students were present, four being MWSA members who had never attended a WYS class before.
An attendance list was taken, and an information sheet about MWSA was provided to all the students. Ruth Crocker presented a class on writing memoirs. Jim Tritten's lesson covered story arc. Jack London covered great openings, and Bob Doerr presented a lesson on point of view and dialogue.
The students appeared to have enjoyed the overall class. All but one completed a class critique form, and all the forms gave all categories the highest rating. I am unaware of any negative feedback. MWSA hosted a pizza lunch in the adjacent food court.
My only negative comment is the lack of attendance by local veterans and family members. We’ll need to get a better jump on this next year.
John Cathcart and Valerie Ormond's presence during the class was appreciated by all.
Overall, other than the lack of attendance, I'd grade this WYS class as a success. The members who attended are now familiar with the class, and if they’re interested, they are better qualified to teach in a future class.
- Bob Doerr
Hugh has announced that he’s not planning to continue as treasurer past his current term. He’s also noted the costs of QuickBooks (they’re now only offering an annual subscription payment plan (even for the desktop version). These two facts lead to required actions on our part.
Treasurer. Make sure we’re recruiting a new treasurer. Rob Lofthouse has expressed an interest.
Bookkeeping Software. Given the costs for QB — roughly $1000/year — and the limited number of transactions we need to track due to check writing, we MAY want to consider another bookkeeping software or system.
Bank. If Hugh’s leaving, we need to consider changing banks. As we’ll no longer be tied to Hugh’s home address.Maybe we need to consider an online-only bank as a replacement that might work no matter where our treasurer lives.
Board
Pres: John won’t run again
VP: Val or move to Pres
Treasurer: Rob has volunteered.
Secretary: Plan?
Jim has stepped down. Should we appoint a temp? Anyone want to be acting sec?
At large
Who plans to stay on?
John will serve if needed and will continue as co-awards director.
New Blood: John recruited possible new members to run: Galen Peterson, Rosalie Spielman, and Jim Bultema. Varying levels of interest/commitment.
Other
Membership Secretary: Jim Bultema
Chairperson of Volunteers: new position, but I believe it’s vital to our mission
Paid temp/part-time helper
Treasurer volunteer (to run at the end of our current terms in office): Rob
Membership Secretary
John’s been “acting” secretary for many months, and I need to stop acting. ;-)
Workload:
Most work is automated by our membership system (Wild Apricot), but there are typically 3-5 emails to answer each month.
Also, each member whose dues expire transitions automatically to associate status. Although the membership status/level is updated automatically, we must manually update their associate member expiration year—the only routine transaction not automatically handled by our system. These updates take about 30 seconds per member and involve about 5-15 individuals monthly.
Chairperson of Volunteers
Why do we need this?
Because only a handful of people routinely do the lion’s share of work for MWSA (this is a typical problem for any volunteer organization).
We’re burning out the “usual suspects” mentioned above.
Frankly, “care and feeding” of volunteers is one of the most important jobs that MWSA should have.
No board member has volunteered yet; I’d rather recruit from our board than try to get a volunteer by begging our general membership (which almost never works).
Possible Duties (to get us started)
Manage existing efforts and suggest systems for:
Volunteer jobs. This usually means coordinating with existing chairs (awards, IT, Dispatches, Ambassadors, etc.).
Recruitment of new volunteers.
Recognition and retention of existing volunteers.
It’s never too late to start looking for the “next generation” of leadership.
Hugh has let us know he’s not running for another term as our treasurer.
I will probably not want to continue as president after my current term.
As much as I had to beg Val to stay on as VP after taking over as president upon Jim’s resignation, I wouldn’t be surprised if she were ready for a break in the action as well.
I’m mentioning the above so we can all imagine what we’d like to happen going forward.
Chairperson of Volunteers? Any volunteers?