Category: Post Business

Trip Report: Mid-Winter Conference 2018

By Harold Rodenberger

 

Along with four other delegates from our post, I attended this year’s Mid-Winter Conference held in Spokane Jan. 19-20, 2018.

 

Friday morning Gail Engler, the Post 3063 Service Officer, Joe Fitzgerald, the Post 3063 Junior Vice Commander, and I attended the Service Officer’s training presented by our new Department of Washington VSO, Bill Brown. Bill gave a comprehensive class covering forms, procedures and available resources.

 

Next on the agenda was the Quartermaster’s Class presented by our new Department Quartermaster, Paul Manley. Paul covered some of the finer points of quartermaster’s duties and answered lots of questions for post quartermasters and other interested people in attendance.

Bob Wallace
The VFW National Representative, Bob Wallace, addresses the conference attendees.

 

To wrap up the day, I attended Nadine Warren’s very informative and motivating Recruiting Class. Nadine is a great speaker. She showed slides and gave examples of the various techniques to get those all-important younger veterans to join our ranks.

 

Saturday, we attended the business session. It was a busy day with remarks by the VFW National Representative, Bob Wallace, and reports from the state line officers. In the afternoon, committee chairpersons reported on the mid-year progress of their committees.

 

VOD winners
Voice of Democracy district winners seated in front of the head table.

Saturday evening was the big event of the conference.  Earlier in the day, Patriot’s Pen and Youth Essay

winners were announced and presented with their awards but at the banquet Saturday night, the Voice of Democracy winners were announced and we listened to their stirring essays on the theme: “What does a veteran mean to me?”. Teacher of the Year Awards also were presented at the banquet.

 

As in past years, at this year’s Mid-Winter Conference our delegates learned some new information about our VFW, the status of our state organization, and returned to our post more enthusiastic, motivated and knowledgeable.

Greetings from the Newly-Elected Auxiliary President: Donna Limric

Hello, my name is Donna Limric and I’m the newly elected VFW Post 3063 Auxiliary President. Thank you to the members of the auxiliary for your votes of confidence. I would also like to introduce our newly elected Sr. Vice President Margo Clutter and our newly elected Treasurer Elizabeth Guncay. I would like to express our gratitude to the past officers for their service and hard work.

 

Last summer I became a member of the auxiliary to support my husband, Norman Limric. I took the position of president to support the post, which has become such an important role in his life.

 

There is a great deal of work to be done to make this a functional auxiliary that fulfills its mission to support our veterans and our community.

 

We need to attract new members. With that goal in mind I have started to build a Facebook page. My next idea is to have a presence at many community events this year.

 

We are currently working on a project to serve our community. We are collecting prepackaged snacks for social services agencies who outreach to homeless mentally ill people in our community; many who are veterans. We will be handing out a flyer with more information at the next business meeting and social. The collection box is on the table across from the front entrance of the hall.

 

If you have a family or friend who is interested in joining the auxiliary, please email me at [email protected].

Quartermaster’s Update (January 2018)

By Harold Rodenberger

 

The turn of another calendar year marks the midpoint of our VFW year. As with most of my cohort, it seems the years flow by faster the older we get. I’m not sure what I did last Wednesday but I vividly recall earning my VFW eligibility in Vietnam even though it was over fifty years ago.

 

The year also passed quickly at VFW Post 3063. Some highlights include:

  • Another year of membership increase
  • Enthusiastic officers filling our organizational chairs
  • Many visits to the VA Hospital and other nursing and retirement homes to visit our veteran comrades
  • Greater activity on our social media platforms
  • A grand fund raiser dinner
  • Increasing ceremonial participation by our nicely uniformed color/honor guard
  • Greater numbers of diners enjoying the menus at our monthly social
  • New meeting arrangements and format for our monthly business meetings

 

Looking forward, we see both challenges and rewards. On the membership front, we’ve lost several of our older members, some younger members have relocated or otherwise moved on and recruiting new members is slower than usual; our building continues its relentless march toward old age; our budget revenue stream is outpaced by expenditures and the color guard needs more members to fulfil the many requests we receive for ceremonies.

 

As for rewards, more of the younger generations of war fighters are joining with us and attending meetings; our administrative procedures are being streamlined and updated and more officers are accepting positions of responsibility to work on the many tasks involved in a growing post. As we meet the challenges our rewards will increase.

 

Back to the calendar year. A symbolic fresh start inspires me to do more for fellow veterans and my community; to find the bright side where I can and accept the not so bright if I must.

 

I need to make more pleasant interactions and less of the surly kind or, “wag more, bark less” as the bumper sticker says.

 

Finally, I resolve sometimes to join my little dog, Kuro, and romp in the snow or otherwise relax and enjoy life.

 

From the Commander (January 2018)

By Pete Krawitz

 

2017 was an exciting year for Post 3063. When I began my journey as your post commander six months ago, I laid out four critical priorities; Membership, Community, Accessibility / Continuity, and the Auxiliary.

 

On the membership front, at the time of writing, our post sits at 88%. We need about 16 new or reinstated members to at meet the 100% goal. I’m confident we will make it. While my stretch goal of 150% may not be attainable this year, I have no reason to doubt that we can double Post 3063’s current membership count (currently 142 members) in the next 2-3 years, especially as our city continues to grow at this rapid pace.

 

In regards to the auxiliary, there are still many unknowns and we are still without an auxiliary president. A few individuals have expressed interest in taking on the role; however, we will know for sure after the special elections that will take place on Jan. 4. Our auxiliary has the potential to be a very critical and active partner once more. Whatever the outcome of this election, I ask that we all be patient and supportive of the new president and our brothers and sisters in the auxiliary.

 

I couldn’t be more impressed with our community outreach this year. Our color guard, under the leadership of Jr. Vice Commander Joe Fitzgerald, has been in high demand and busier than ever. We also have a new VA hospital visit coordinator (Comrade Guncay) and continue to make our regular visits to the patients during the holidays. Even some of our new members (Comrades Cavin and Rose) immediately jumped into helping the veteran community and represented Post 3063 by volunteering at the recent Seattle Stand Down event. These are just a few examples of the excellent community work our post members have engaged in this year.

 

Regarding accessibility and continuity, this is what most of the leadership team is going to be focusing on over the next six months. I have asked the leadership team to start documenting some of our processes. We are going digitize our records and create templates that will make running the post a little less daunting for those considering taking on a post leadership role in the future.

 

Change, no matter how small, is never easy. I’m very thankful of everyone’s support, guidance, patience, and most importantly, the willingness to test out some of the changes we’ve implemented this year (meeting format, projector, etc…). While none of these changes are necessarily set in stone, I believe many of these slight modifications are the first few steps to make our post more resilient and able to continue operating for many years to come. With that being said, we still have a lot of work to do in 2018. I look forward to your continued support as we continue to solidify our presence as Seattle’s premier VFW post in this rapidly changing city.

 

All the best to you and yours in 2018. Happy New Year, Comrades!