President's Message - July 2008

Greetings, I would like to apologize for missing our April meeting. I am the Chattanooga Area Chair for the Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve and I was attending training in New Orleans. I believe that our April speaker was informative and entertaining. I regret I missed his presentation but I conveyed our appreciation in my letter thanking him for his efforts.

Your board has been studying our membership and retention and we see signs of alarm. Instead of increasing our membership we have declined slightly during the past six months. Please help us recruit new members and renew your own membership when the time comes. We have set our goal to achieve 208 members in 2008.

Our organization performs a vital assist to the sea services and we contribute to our nation’s defense by our lobbying efforts. We have made presentations to our Congressmen and have attempted to schedule meetings with our Senators. If any of you have any influence with our Senators please contact Will Zimmerman and assist us in scheduling a presentation.

I would like to again make an appeal for everyone to pay your local dues. We need these funds to help support the Sea Cadets, the Howard NJROTC program and our support of the USS Tennessee crew. We budget for these items and we cannot meet our budget unless we have the funds to do so. Our local dues are fifteen dollars for an individual member and twenty dollars for a couple. When you receive your Compass Points we will indicate by a mark on your label those who have paid their local dues. If you do not have a red mark on your label please include your dues with dinner reservations or send form with dues to Ed Lusk.

In this political season please remember our organization cannot endorse candidates, but we can encourage everyone to vote and register their opinion at the polls.
Regards,

Bill Hewitt

Postscript - Please pick up application forms at dinner for use in recruiting new members! Wives, friends, business contacts are good candidates!