Minutes 21 June 2012 The first meeting of the new board of the class of 1957 commenced at 11:03 hours EST by teleconference at the direction of President Paul Schwehm. on June 21st,2012. Class Secretary, Ray Karsian called the roll. All board members, five regional representatives and Class Advisor to the AOG, Ted Voorhees were in attendance, a total of 13 class members were on the call. President Schwehm then asked Karsian to seat the newly elected regional representatives.
They were seated as follows: Far-West, Bill
Golden Schwehm then introduced projects/issues that are a carry over from the previous board for entry into the record for further consideration and action by the current board. They are as follows: 1. Our class is the only class to date to be allowed to place their class crest or similar recognition in the library. We will be placing a crest in the coffee shop in the library. John Hocker, class 2nd VP noted that the coffee shop seems to be heavily used. Schwehm had the opinion that the shop was a bit drab and needed some improved decor. It should be noted that Paul Schwehm and 1st VP, Bill Ray, will be attending the AOG leadership conference this August at West Point and both will inspect all class gifts for maintenance status after the meeting. 2. The Honor Kiosk needs a Class Crest and additional headphones. Paul has approved the invoice to pay for these phones. 3, Bob Stevens feels the lights in the gym hallway are not properly aimed to highlight our gift. This issue will be inspected by Schwehm and Ray. 4 .There has been a request to identify a source to re-produce the ladies class pins given to them at the 45th reunion. Ted Voorhees will be contacting the manufacturer of eggs given at the 55th reunion to see if they can/will produce the pin for our class. Other classes have shown an interest in such a pin for their class. 5. There has been a request to replace or upgrade the lights on the Honor Plaza. 6, Class medals. Gerry Galloway, our past president initiated a new medal to be given to those who gave special service to the class over the years. This year, Max Kovel, Tom Kehoe and John Stokes received the awards. Paul Schwehm suggests that if we are to continue this program, written guide lines should be established for the awarding of the medal. Provisions should be made to manufacture these medals. President Schwehm explained the process of how the medals were given at this years banquet. Walt Rabe, our current Treasurer, offered the comment that such medals seem rather transitory and asked if some more meaningful award could be considered. Ray Karsian supported this thought process and asked the question as to “what would be a meaningful award” at this time of life for the many of us entering our 80's. This topic will be addressed at a later date.
CLASS FINANCES The former board
has not heard nor reviewed the finances from the 55th
reunion. Therefore no report was given on our current finances by
Treasurer Walt Rabe. Such a report will be given at a later date,
probably at our next meeting. Paul Schwehm did say that we may still
be facing additional charges from the reunion hotel for not using up
our reserved rooms due to cancellations. CLASS GIFT SUPPORT Bill Ray discussed the status of our two endowments for the maintenance of our class gifts. There is a $50,000 endowment for support of the Fountain, Class Tree, Hallway in the Gym and Honor Plaza. There is a separate endowment of $10,000 for support of the Honor Kiosk in the Library. It was stated that the Office of the Dean will be responsible to technically update the equipment in the Kiosk every 5 or 6 years. Current contracts for these two endowments will be presented to and reviewed by AOG at the leadership conference this August. Bill Ray stated that only the investment income from these endowments could be used for maintenance of our memorials. John Ramsden expressed concern that with only the interest being available to pay for maintenance, there would be little if any money available given the current economic conditions, and asked the question, could the class better handle these funds than the AOG. Max Kovel, expressed the thought that the AOG has done reasonably well with their investments and they handle all the paperwork. The bottom line is that neither the Academy nor AOG has the funds to maintain class gifts and classes themselves must allocate funds for the purpose of maintaining their gifts. For the expenditure of class gift funds, there must be a vote by the class for such action and approval by both the Academy Superintendent and the AOG for such action. In a sense, our class gift funds do not “belong” to us. BOARD COMMUNICATIONS John Hocker reviewed plans and options for future board teleconferences. The current use of a phone conference hookup with the recording of the minutes is at no charge to the class. Individual board members must call a number on their own phones (plans). There could be an option of using Go To Meeting. Com, a chargeable site at $49 per month or $460 per year. Individuals would have to use Skype a video capability. This means the purchase of a computer camera to place on their monitor. View graphs and presentations could also be used. Karsian and Kovel stated they have Skype capability now. No further discussion of these options was offered. CLASS ROSTERS=WEB SITE AND SERVERS Don Sadler, our new Information Systems Officer, presented a review of the transition of his office from Tom Kehoe. It is going well, however he has much work to do to add to and improve our data and rosters as follows. Tom Kehoe has been very helpful in the transition.
Don plans to maintain our Five Regional servers
with a consistent format in names and data. He plans to send out new
Excel files for each region to work with. He also plans to have up
to three new class rosters to include a roster for each company with
more complete data. For the class Web site he is adding to it now but plans to re-do the entire site in the future. He currently has added some pictures from the 55th reunion. He did ask that any one sending him pictures send along captions with names and places so he can easily enter the pictures on the site. He did ask for any suggestions for changes or additions others might like for the web site. Please send him an e-mail with any ideas. He hopes to serve the class as best as he can with the site. Finally, Don made the request for anyone submitting data to him to monitor addresses and e-mail addresses carefully. It is key to have clean and up to date data on all classmates. He will be asking the Regional Representatives to help him in obtaining clean data from their membership. Walt Rabe suggested going directly to the company representatives might be helpful for updated information, as they might be closer to their company mates. Don Sadler will review this idea, but hopes to use the Regional Representatives as best as he can. John Hocker asked for a clarification on the hyphenation and capitalization of the five regional names. Standardization is key and agreed to by all. Max Kovel mentioned that the AOG is pushing for classes to integrate their databases with AOG databases and will encourage this move at the August conference. Sadler will review any format concerns or problems we might have in this regard. AOG.ORG , TAPS,ASSEMBLY, WP MAGAZINE AND CLASS NOTES
Max Kovel gave an update on these publications.
TAPS is automatic through this year. This is only for those who had a
subscription for the Assembly when it was terminated. After that, it
can be purchased for $15 per year in hard copy. We will be able to
access it on the class web site. The ASSEMBLY is dead as we knew it.
Class notes will be available via the AOG, class web sites or hard
copy via Kovel. The West Point Magazine goes free as of now to
40,000 graduates. AOG needs funds to maintain this policy. AOG
continues to work on and maintain a REGISTER of Graduates. It will be
published only at 5-10 year intervals and one must purchase it if you
want it. Several Board members have inquired about an update to our wonderful 50th reunion book. Max will pursue the idea of having a 10 year update to our book for the 60th reunion. Any ideas the board has for inclusions in such an update are welcomed and should be submitted to Max. He also offered the opinion that we should look at what support the class gives to widows and how to maintain contact with them. We currently have one widow who may act as a coordinator for such contact and support. Again, this topic will be addressed at a later meeting. Max also introduced the topic of our 50 year class of 2007 and how we should or can keep in contact with them and support them in such issues as recognizing their battlefield deceased. Paul Schwehm had some further comments. He inquired as to how we could learn about our class support to the west-point.org organization at their regular 6 months fund drives? Several had the opinion that such results were published after the drive was over. Don Sadler will inquire as to how this is done. Paul then talked to the five Regional Representatives. He encouraged them to have more interaction both ways with the members of their respective regions, not only informing them of the boards activities, but gaining ideas and input from them. He asked Bill Golden representative of the Far-West Region to coordinate with the other four representatives as to how they could better interact with their memberships and to report the results of their discussions at the next board meeting. GOALS DISCUSSION Paul Schwehm then asked for a random discussion of suggestions for goals the board should entertain in the coming years. Max offered that the class should focus on what class members want from the board, what we can do for them as we move into the next five years and our 80's. A discussion with input from John Ramsden and Fred Smith about how to gather data for and write classmate memorial articles in the future was conducted. Fred felt that living classmates could help now by recording information about themselves for future use in articles. John felt that the company representatives should continue to be the key focal point of contact for the writing of the articles. Ray Karsian again offered that the board should consider new ideas as to how to make the 60th more unique and personal to each classmate perhaps through more time at West Point and interaction with classmates and current cadets. More ideas and time need to be dedicated to the development of our goals at a later meeting. Paul Schwehm closed the meeting commenting that we as a class will need to select a class adviser to the AOG in 2014 in advance of our next reunion. Bill Ray then moved to adjourn the conference call meeting at 12:05 Eastern time after and hour and two minutes in session. The next meeting will take place in late August after Schwehm and Bill Ray return from the AOG conferences in August. Respectively Submitted,
Raymond T. Karsian
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