Brothers,
We just had a meeting of the class officers and the committee chairs.
Things are routine---no drama.
We did get the sad news today of the death of John Decker, a combat infantryman who led a rifle platoon for a year in the 196th, with John Vermillion and Larry White, and I am sure others of our class. John was and is a great guy-- may God rest his valiant soul. He is our 96th fallen member. He was in H-1, and was born in North Carolina.
On another note, we are getting sign-ups at the hotel and for the football game-- about 80 so far-- for Bill Roedy's festivities for the Distinguished Graduate Award, 10-12 September. Bill Taylor--the hardest working man in show biz, with his newly revascularized leg, his fresh-from-the-hospital duty status, and his four jobs-- has sent out a poop sheet, and will continue to refine the info. AOG also will publish a registration site. We are all invited-- the entire class-- to dinner in the mess hall that weekend, 10-12 September. We will be doing a bit of partying down at the hotel also.
AOG is shy some email addresses for us. If you want to be known and reachable, you can contact AOG at address@wpaog.org and get them straight. This would help us achieve inclusion and consensus also.
Betsey Blakeslee, Doc's wife, is running the preservation project for the fortifications on Fortress West Point. We can probably play a role in publicizing and lending moral support. That's about it for now, since we have just made a sizeable contribution to the effort. But this is a 12 million dollar effort, so our role will now be other than financial. John Connors is on the board of the project, as is Joe Reeder, and they will see what we can do, if anything is needed. Meantime, Pat Sculley's son Sean, a full bull and permanent professor, is involved with the tour of the redoubts-- he may fix us up with a tour during the 10-12 Sep weekend. That's up in the air for now.
I hope everyone got a chance to see Vic Madeja's poop sheet on helping veterans with claims. Vic is a source of encyclopedic info on this topic.
All the committees are making progress. Getting organized and started has its bumps in the road, but we are plowing along and hoping for results to start coming. Steve Wilson has got a feel for a work result even before Christmas, when I thought it would be coming. He will be making appointments from among volunteers to get his network together.
Kurt Reineke and his IC3 crew had a commo exercise this week that revealed a bunch of things to iron out--- good, glad we tried it. Our consensus machine will get built an inch at a time. Kurt reports that all members of the network are fully committed and working at it with a will.
John Van Vliet and his committee heads, Donna Jackson (Billy's widow), Rick Thibodeau, Tom Rozman and Nick Sebastion are going to be looking for volunteers to man the "expertise pods" for advising and mentoring our thousands of children and grandchildren. Be on the lookout for their request for help.
Gil Harper is standing by, waiting for something to happen. So far, everything is cool.
Our finances are sound--we have five funds and they are all in the black and well propped up for the long haul. Bill Cater has them in hand.All are fully funded with some excess.
I have signed the MacArthur Cup Award endowment, with advice from our legal watchdog and VP, John Connors. AOG will take receipt of our check soon.
The golf event is coming up from 29 Aug--4 Sep, and the NCEA is 18-19 October. Those and the Distinguished Graduate Award round out the fall calendar, and then we beat the hell out of Navy.
Bill Taylor and I will get a class-wide zoom together as soon as we can, hopefully with a theme and a speaker, or at least an agenda. In the meantime, we have a 4th Regimental zoom which I have been hosting for about 15 months. The guest list keeps getting bigger. There is no agenda, it is free-form and somewhat unpredictable, but all opinions are respected and welcome, and no disrespect or discourtesy is tolerated.
If you would like to get on it (usually Tuesday and Friday at 2pm central) please send me an email with your address and I will add you to the invite roster. My email is papasully7023@gmail.com
God bless everybody.
Serve With Integrity
Beat Navy
Sully
PS: In addition to keeping AOG (and our class) informed of your updated contact information (send updates to address@wpaog.org), please stay tuned to our class web page (http://usma1970.com), our class Facebook Group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/usma1970), and our class blog at http://usma1970.blogspot.com
