Minutes of the 623^rd Board Meeting

September 13, 2008 at the Academy Hotel in Colorado Springs, Colorado

The meeting was called to order at 1410; board members present were Gary Friesen, Jim Simpson, Ed Beck, Stan Duro, Dave Cory and Bill Bever. Several guests also attended the board meeting.

Stan Duro started the meeting with the treasurer’s report. The balance in our account before the final reunion expenses was $7847.02.

Stan and Dave Cory led a discussion on the handling of dues payments. Dues will continue to be mailed to Dave, who will forward the checks to Stan. Upon receipt of the checks, Stan will e-mail Dave a confirmation or receipt and deposit of the checks. Last year, a ‘batch’ of checks were lost in the mail and were a long time getting recovered.

Old business:

Gary Friesen called for discussions of any old business. There was no old business to discuss. Gary then opened the floor for discussion of new business.

New business:

• The first order of new business was a discussion on where to hold the 2010 reunion. Because of the cancellation of Biloxi due to Hurricane Katrina, all members of the board proposed Biloxi. Then, as a proxy for David Law, Ed Beck proposed having the 2010 reunion – or a reunion at some later year – in Seattle. Jim Simpson then submitted the cities of Eugene, OR and Oklahoma City, OK for consideration. After a brief discussion, the board voted to recommend Biloxi for 2010 and Seattle for 2012 to the general meeting.
• We then had a presentation from Creative Training, the group that managed the C/S reunion. They would like to be involved in all our future reunions, as they do business nationwide. The officers’ agreed to take this into consideration. However, we also agreed that the overall chairman of any reunion would have final say on using this company, or any reunion planning company.
• We then had an open discussion on dues, and particularly on how to get more members to pay dues (the last accounting of this was that only 7% of the folks listed in our directory pay dues). Some of the suggestions were to put a survey in the Scanner about our organization, with the last survey question being a gentle reminder to pay dues. Whatever we do about dues, Dave Cory wants to keep all the names in the directory, because it is intended to be a list of Okinawa veterans, including when and where they served on Okinawa. Because of time constraints, nothing was resolved on increasing the payment of dues.

At 1500, to accommodate the general business meeting, we adjourned the board meeting.