- Next Sunday June 4th from 2:00 – 4:30pm at Rolling Hills Community Church, Tualatin Oregon, please join Mark Cooksey, Ray Miller, & John Bickford our ALITC representatives from the Class of 1971 as we welcome the latest appointees to USNA & NAPS. Our local Oregon-SW Washington Parents’ Club will host their annual event, “welcoming aboard” the latest plebe class from our area and proud parents. We have in the past, representatives from 1962 through 1970 also in attendance. Please join us and RSVP to: USNA PCORWA [mailto:usnapcorwa@gmail.com] .
- Congratulations to our new Chapter/Council officers & members who were elected May 10th, by both ballot affirmation & acclamation at our Chapter meeting, for the next two years – Doug Ballard President, Mike Carmichael VP, Ted Scypinski Treasurer, Pete Crystal, Butch Bewick, Dave Lutes, and Susan Mead.
- Thank you Butch Bewick for assisting in setting up our meeting room May 10th and providing a most insightful Blue & Gold brief. Thanks Pete Crystal as our faithful scribe & roving photographer and Ted Scypinski as our official greeter, roster/door keeper & tab collector. Lastly, thank you Janette Sandberg in sending out invites via different media and in election ballot compilation.
- For our June 14th Chapter meeting Pete Young ’67 will provide us, a narrated PowerPoint program that features images from the Yard that were taken in the early years of the last century – sometime around 1908 or so. These photos were snapshots taken by a family from Washington DC, and have never been published. These snapshots were taken with an early Brownie camera and annotated by the wife of a Civil War veteran as they showed family members around the Yard. They tie in on how he came to possess the USNA snapshots and others.
- Additionally on June 14th Doug Ballard will provide us a short brief on this year’s USNAAA Chapter Presidents’ meeting and latest trustees’ meeting which he attended May 11th & 12th.
- Again, please note that on Saturday July 29th Butch Bewick and Jack Kohl will host our last “BGO Recognition” BBQ. We have stood up a committee chaired by Susan Mead to consider soonest sites & associated required services for future “Annual Chapter” picnics. This first event in 2018 is being tentatively planned as a general picnic outing for the local Naval Academy “family” (i.e., parents, Midshipmen, alums, etc.). Susan has reported that the same issues remain i.e. how are we to cover the expenses of a picnic including location rent, liquor license, licensed servers as well as food and beverages. Options for locale such as wineries are being discussed as well as at parks and members’ locations including SW Washington. If you are in favor of continuing to have a summer picnic and are interested in assisting Susan, please contact one of our Council members.
- If you have traveled up the Willamette River towards Swan Island, you may have seen a “grey hull” in dry dock. That’s the USS Frank Cable (AS-40) normally home-ported in Guam, but undergoing an overhaul here in Portland until September. We have invited her new Commanding Officer, Captain Jeff Farah USN, to brief us on our current “Silent Service” July 12th.
- Of a personal note, on behalf of my nine year-old granddaughter Chloe, thank you for contributing to this year’s “Cystic Fibrosis Great Strides Walk” at Oaks Bottom Park as a member of “Chloe’s Crusaders”. The team raised in excess of $94K. Again, thank you!
- Lastly, Happy 50th Anniversary to the Class of 1967 and Congrats to the Class of 2017!