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Directors MessagesDirectors Message Kent A. Rowald We are still in need of an editor for the Gulf Star. Whil e I don’t mind helping with it, my work schedule is at the mercy of persons wearikng robes and banging gavels, persons who don't usually worry too much about my schedule and planned activities. Normally I can work around it, but periodically it results in newsletters getting mailed less than a week before our meeting. This is one of those times! My goal is typically to get the newsletter in the mail about 10 days before the next meeting. I also want to keep at least a couple of months worth of meeting information on the calendar of events pages. Unfortumately it takes a lot of time and energy to keep that calendar up to date, particularly as events pop us that cause us to move around the schedule. This month is a classic example. We still have our Sunday, February 5 meeting depite it being Super Bowl Sunday. I promise to keep it short so we will have plenty of time to get home, switch to our evening cars if we need to (and with the cars I drive to our meetings, I need to!), and get to our respective super bowl advertisement watching parties. No one really watches the game any more, do they? After that, please check the schedule—the Oldsmobile Club has invited us to join them on a tour of the Sterling McCall museum on February 18, 2006. If you have never been through that museum, you have missed a great collection. And if you have been, it is time to go again! More details on this trip are in the story starting on page 3. Another event that we will modify the calendar for is the annual interretional meet. We now have dates and places, so look for them on the calendar page and for details in future editions. For those of you who indiated a willingness to write a story about your car, your first love, the car you always wanted, the car that got away, the car that almost caused a divorce, or any other topic of interest, please email it to me If you don’t have email, fax it to me at 713-402-3901 Thanks! Until next time, keep those tires between the white lines! Kent Directors Message Kent A. Rowald I want to give particular thanks to Marvin Kelly for making his Texas Limo with horns available for use by a local country club for their “Western Theme New Year’s Eve Bash”. The Club Manager is still gushing about just how perfect it was to have the guests greeted by such an Icon of Texas! Moreover, Marvin’s generosity with his time and car resulted in a very nice boost to the treasury in the form of an honorarium from the country club and was fun for Marvin too! Next I am renewing my plea for some help from our members. As you will see on the from some of our members to step up and be more active in the behind the scenes activities as well as the activities for the club as a whole. In particular, as you will note in the column just to the right of this one, we have several openings that we have a critical need to fill. The most urgent is that we need to have an Editor for YOUR NEWSLETTER—THE GULF STAR! In addition, we have an urgent need for some new authors for periodic articles for inclusion in the newsletter. Simply put, when there are three or four submissions in addition to the regular columns, the newsletter becomes a matter of laying it out, verifying the info, and send them to me for printing and distribution via e– or snail– mail. That can be somewhat time consuming, but it is manageable. However, when the editor has to write most of the articles in addition to those duties, it rapidly becomes an overload for one person. Unfortunately, I am now taking on that role too! Please note that the submission does not have to be perfect—just some original prose in your style. The Editor can clean up your musings much more quickly and easily than he can write it all from scratch. Moreover, it is more interesting and educational for the membership as a whole to hear about your latest trip, how you found your dream car, the nightmare you had during your restoration, why you dream about one day owning a particular car or any other topic you may find interesting that it is to read the stuff I try to throw together in those fictional “spare moments! Next, the Website Manager position has the SAME issue, as does Secretary. PLEASE help me out here and volunteer. I’ll help you in every way that I can, but I simply cannot continue to take on all of these roles in addition to the Region Director role! Finally, I want to that all of you that have sent in articles, organized outings (both past and future ones—hint here: any trip you find interesting will be doubly interesting with your GCR-CLC friends), and otherwise helped us get together the many events and meetings we are undertaking. Moreover, as you may have noticed, the help and input from those of you who have given that to us has, I’m sure you have noticed, resulted in more varied and fun locales at which we hold our brief meetings. Thanks for ALL that you have done and all you will be volunteering to do to help keep this club vibrant, growing and fun for us all. Until next time, keep those tires between the white lines! Kent Directors Message Kent A. Rowald I’m sure that many of you noticed in your snail mail copy of the November Gulf Star that there was a decided lack of color. That was simply a cost cutting measure designed to insure that there are sufficient funds to continue to have a newsletter at least until dues replenish the treasury. While we have had a few added to the e-Gulf Star, which saves us a substantial amount, we still have nearly 85% of our newsletters delivered by snail mail. Going to black and white for all eight pages instead of having two in color cuts the costs of printing those in half! We had good turnouts at both events in November: the regular meeting at the Antique Center on the West Loop at I-10 and at the First Annual Rice Owls – Gulf Coast Region Cadillac LaSalle Club Car Show. While we did not have nearly as many cars as hoped in the show, the trophies, t-shirts and a thank you gift for entering were donated by PatentLawyers.com, tickets to the Rice-Tulane football game were donated by the Rice athletic department and the beer for those who worked the car show and exhibited cars was donated by Two Rows Restaurant and Brewery. Cars ranged from a 1913 Trumbull Roadster to a 1972 Corvette in pristine condition. All judging was by vote of the crowd (about 250 ballots got turned in – John Thomas was hawking ballots like a madman!) with the winners being: Pre-40’s – Tom Timmons’ 1913 Trumbull; 40’s – 1st place - Bob Kraitchar’s 1947 Cadillac Convertible on the strength of a last second ballot (the ballots had been counted when one last ballot was accepted due to tie votes for both 1st and second!); 2d – Kent Rowald’s 1940 LaSalle; 50’s – 1st – Duane Medley’s 1958 Eldo; 2d – Robert Hamlin’s 1959 Caddy; 60’s – 1st – John Thomas’s 1966 Nassau Blue Corvette 327-350; 70’s – 1st – Melissa Neiman’s 1972 Corvette; 2d – Don Ahren’s 1970 Deville Convertible. Notably, the Rice folks were impressed with the cars that were there and had good feedback from the Homecoming crowd on them. As a result, they have requested that we make this an annual event. I have agreed that we would do so since it would become the annual fundraiser that we have so desperately needed since the Cadillac dealerships stopped sponsoring the club. To put it in perspective, with the very small turnout that we had at this show, the club cleared about $200. With the show being added to the Rice Athletic department radio ads the week leading up to the event and more lead time to get the word out, we can easily increase the size of this show by 50-60 cars at $35 each, which all goes straight to the bottom line for the club. Rice has also requested that we have a meeting at the first Conference USA baseball series for Rice. We are to bring our cars to display in front of the baseball stadium and they will give us tickets to the game. The game will be against East Carolina at 2 pm on Saturday, March 25. Put it on your calendars – these are fun games and, if you have kids, make sure they bring something to get autographed and get there early so they can stand with their favorite player on the field during the national anthem prior to the game. As I write this, we are still working on setting up the venue and date for the holiday party. However, we tentatively set for either the second or third Saturday in December in an air-conditioned state room on the Battleship Texas. Cost will be in the $10 to $20 range for a Tex Mex fare. Hopefully we will have the date all finalized and on the calendar section of this newsletter prior to printing. Otherwise, check the website! I look forward to seeing each of you at the holiday party. Until then, keep those old cars rolling and between the white lines! Kent Directors Message Kent A. Rowald Between the hurricane, late deadlines, and moved meeting times and places, the turnout at the last meeting was light. However, those that attended got as much German food as they could pile on a plate, enjoyed the German band "AlpenFest", an Oldies Band "Guppies From Outer Space, as well as a silent auction and lots of games for the kids. Don Ahren’s car got parked front and center for those walking to and from the parking lot and got lots of attention. The kids kept saying things like, “Cool ride” and “Awesome car, dude.” The adults kept saying things like, “They don’t make ‘em like that anymore”, “Wish I still had my old Caddy” and “Bet that takes $100 to fill these days!” While our next, previously announced meeting is to be the car show we are hosting at Rice Stadium on November 12, several have expressed an interest in an earlier meeting too. Therefore, we have identified Texas Antiques and Collectibles Center (West Loop and I-10) as a interesting meeting spot for our normal, first Sunday, November 6, 12:30pm meeting. There is a good, albeit limited, grill menu at the snack bar at the center. The Car show preparations are on-going. At this point we have commitments from several non-club members to bring their cars, ranging from a 1931 Ford rumble seat roadster, to a 1956 Kaiser, to a 1971 Corvette, to a 2003 Jaguar (which I’m calling a “future classic” since we are looking for classics to show with each decade of Rice alums that are at this homecoming game). We also have a couple of cars from our club entered, but not many! If you want to enter the show, please get the entry form from the website. We continue to have a trickle of members and non-member VIP’s opt for the Gulf Star e-dition in lieu of snail mail. Hopefully those of you that have email got a copy in October as well as the later mailed edition. If you didn’t it was because I don’t have your email address. If you’d like to see what the e-dition looks like, send me an email and I’ll get a copy to you so you can compare it to the snail mail version. Finally, I am still begging, pleading, screaming for help - we still need to fill THREE open positions: Secretary, Archivist and Webmaster. If you don’t think you have time but would be willing to share duties with someone else, let me know and I’ll put the volunteers together so they can figure out what works best for them. In the interim, the minutes are being poorly kept, the archives are stacking up and the webpage is being updated sporadically and only as “spare” time permits. I hope each of you will take the time to come see the huge warehouse full of antiques on the 6th. You might find something that would go well with you car when you are showing it. You might find something that reminds you of your childhood! You might find something that reminds you that we have progressed an amazing amount in a short time! And you might find that some of the “junk” you have collected and gathering dust at your house carries a hefty price tag (or perhaps a not so hefty price tag) when it is classified as “antique” or “collectible”. If it is a pretty day, be sure to drive you Caddy – they need to be driven periodically, even if it does cost an arm and a leg to fill it up! That is cheaper than the repairs caused by not running them. We will also have a parking lot all to ourselves across the street from the Antique Center so we don’t have to worry about everyday patrons giving our precious cars parking lot dings. I look forward to seeing each of you on November 6 and again on the 12th. Until then, keep those old cars rolling and between the white lines! Kent Directors Message Kent A. Rowald As much as I hated to miss the last meeting, I was tied up with other Cadillac and LaSalle related activity – running my cars through a classic car auction in an effort to find them a new home and clear space for my new toy. Unfortunately, the rain kept attendance down and at this particular auction, if it wasn’t a fixer-upper muscle car, it didn’t sell. Therefore, my quest continues, but hopefully won’t cross paths with future meetings.! Lynn Wegner was tied up and had to arrive late too, so we recruited Brian Fogarty, who I am told ran through my agenda in rapid order at the meeting, which was lightly attended. Many thanks to Brian for pinch hitting on short notice! I have not had any feedback on why attendance was light: was it just too far south on I-45, was it the light rain or was it the move to a Saturday? I’d appreciate if you would let me know so we can continue to schedule things that the members want to do – that makes this more fun for all of us.! While some of us had Margaritas at our neighborhood Hurricane Rita parties and others fought histoRita-cal traffic while fleeing for higher ground, the new result was that newsletter got pushed back. Further, we realized that we had given conflicting info on the when and where for the October meeting at the August and September meetings. Net result – WE ARE CHANGING THE OCTOBER WHEN AND WHERE AGAIN! Next up on the club agenda is DeutschesFest in Tomball, on October 9. DeutschesFest includes a $7 German lunch (including tea or lemonade) and other foods, games for kids of all ages, a craft fair, silent and live auctions, the German band "AlpenFest", an Oldies Band "Guppies From Outer Space. While it is the annual fundraiser for Concordia Lutheran School in Tomball, I view it as just and all-around fun. Festivities run 11:30 – 4:00. I certainly hope to see our usual good turnout at around noon for lunch and a VERY brief meeting (I know, the adjective “brief” shouldn’t be used by a lawyer, but I promise!). Thereafter, check out the crafts, run your kids, grandkids, neighbor’s kids or whatever other kid you may bring through the fun stuff, or just enjoy the festivities. ! Some of our members will be attending the Cadoil Festival in Port Arthur on October 20, but those who have expressed an interest in that event have all indicated that they will be driving over on their own, so no caravan is planned. However, if you need help along the way, I have no doubt any club members that see you will not leave you stranded!! We follow that up with our First Annual Rice Owls/Gulf Coast Region, Cadillac LaSalle Club Classic Car Show on November 12 (November 19 will be the rain out day). We have one sponsor for the event right now and a couple more who are seeking authority to use their advertising budgets for this. If you know anyone who would be interested in sponsoring the event, put them in touch with me ASAP! If you will be going to any car club meetings any time soon, let me know and I’ll get you some flyers to pass out so we can make the local car clubs aware of this event. By the time you receive this, I hope to have a signup form and on our website and on-line registration capability. ! Finally, we have had several more members sign up for the Gulf Star e-dition in lieu of snail mail and have received rave reviews from those who got it initially that way. On behalf of the entire board, I thank you all for your consideration of and participation in this shift in delivery – it is a huge moneysaver for the club.! On the purely administrative side, I repeat my plea - we still need volunteers for THREE open positions: Secretary, Archivist and Webmaster. Regarding the last one, if you don’t have the computer skills for this job and don’t want to learn them, recruit you kid or grandkid and get them a kid’s membership to national. Then we can put them to “FUN” (what we would call work!). ! I look forward to seeing each of you on October 9. Until then, keep those old cars rolling and between the white lines! Kent Directors Message Kent A. Rowald Despite the rain and incredible light show, there was a very good turnout of both cars and, more importantly, people at the latest meeting held at Casa Grande. After enjoying the company of the other club members, we had a very productive, yet relatively short meeting. If you missed the meeting, email me and I’ll send you a copy of the handouts! For those of you wondering, one of the handouts was the preliminary calendar of events for the next year, featuring eight regular meetings at various local restaurants, the Gulf Coast Region, Cadillac LaSalle Club/Rice Owls car show, two and possibly three driving tours, a couple additional potential fundraisers which we are still evaluating to determine if the return on the effort is worthwhile for the club, and about ten other potential events that some of our members will likely attend, either on their own or as a club. Another handout was an informational sheet on the Gulf Coast Region, Cadillac LaSalle Club/Rice Owls car show, showing what preliminary matters need work, the basic schedule of events, and what the Rice athletic department is donating to make this event both saleable for them and lucrative for us! After discussing this basic listing of upcoming events, a poll of other potential destinations and driving tours was distributed. While there was a good turnout of members, only about 1/3 of those present returned their polls. As a result, it is the interests expressed by that 1/3 (and anyone else that wants to fill one out and emails me to get a copy) that will help set the agenda for next year and fill in for any event that falls through this year. As always, if there is some particular event that you know about that you believe will have interest to the general membership at large, please let us know as soon as you can so that we can rearrange the schedule if need be or get it on the schedule if there is enough notice. Finally, a sign-up sheet for those who would like to get their Gulf Star with ALL pages in color via e-mail delivery (sent the same day that it goes to the printer, thereby guaranteeing delivery at least two to three days earlier) was circulated. With eleven members signing up for email delivery in lieu of snail mail delivery, if we presumed that no one else took that option (which I hope is a VERY bad assumption – and we all know what happens when you ass-u-me!), the club just saved about $275 for the year. If you are unsure about whether you want email delivery, give it a try. If you don’t like it, we will put you back on the snail mail list. While $275 doesn’t sound like much, that is nearly 8% of the budget for the year and is very significant in the grand scheme of things. As noted during the last meeting, the board considered and approved increasing yearly dues from $20 to $25 as well to insure that we are on solid financial footing. That was put to a vote of the membership at the meeting and passed by acclamation. On a more immediate need note, we have THREE open positions that we really need to fill soon: Secretary, Archivist and Webmaster. Due to various circumstances, from too much work, to poor treatment by Mother Nature to not enough real world, paying work, all three of these positions are open. As a practical matter, I am already stretched well beyond my limits and all three areas will start suffering even more than they already are if I don’t get some relief in the form of volunteers. If you attend the meetings and can make notes, even if it is just added comments on the preprinted agenda I put together, you qualify to be Secretary! Archivist is, I am convinced from watching my better half do the job for years, a fancy word for organized packrat. Finally, Webmaster – this takes some computer knowledge and thus my plea goes out to those who don’t qualify as luddites (even if you claim to be one!). If you can run front page (or know html, that’s dating my skill set a bit since I’ve been hand coding this stuff!) and know how to transfer files across the internet (yes, the letters FTP should mean something to you), then I’m BEGGING for relief from you! I look forward to seeing each of you at upcoming meetings. Until then, keep those old cars rolling! Kent Directors Message Kent A. Rowald It has certainly been gratifying to see everyone rally around the recent call for commitments to volunteer for fundraising activities that we will be undertaking in the coming year as we work to get the club onto better financial footing. That willingness of all of us to give a little of our time and effort to help the club allows us all to enjoy more car related activities and keep the dues we have to pay to a minimum. Although the board has not yet met as I write this, we have a long agenda to wade through so that we can give each of you as much advance warning as possible on upcoming events and changes. In particular, we will be trying to set forth a preliminary schedule of events for the entire year, which will be subject to change based upon any special events that crop up. If you don’t see your pet event on the schedule, it is because we either did not know about it or didn’t believe there was sufficient interest among all members to justify it. Nevertheless, please let us have the info on it so we can get it on a calendar of car related events for our members’ information, whether we are participating as a club or not. As I noted during the last meeting, we will also have to make some changes, particularly relating to the newsletter. As we all know, the newsletter is by far the most expensive line item of the club and, while we hope to raise sufficient funds to minimize changes, we will be discussing how to be fiscally responsible while bringing you the best value. Please understand that your prior management team was certainly diligent in pursuing cost cutting measures and fundraising opportunities as they arose, but economic decisions beyond their control have hurt both the revenue and cost side of the equation, leading us to this belt-tightening position. One of the most telling statistics in that regard is the fact that the dues for this club remain among the lowest of any regional club in Houston and among Cadillac LaSalle clubs overall and have not increased since our inception! In the past, we have had the luxury of dealership sponsorships and the benefit of a contractual “mistake” by the printer that effectively underwrote the newsletter. Unfortunately, the dealership advertisement funds were redirected several years ago and the printer dramatically increased his prices to make up for his mistake. As a result, we had competitive bidding for the printing and switched printers, but costs have still nearly doubled during the last two years. Some of the options being considered include asking those of you that are computer savvy to opt for emailed copies of the newsletter, which would include color throughout rather than on just the front and back covers and arrive several days earlier than the mailed copy would. Whether we continue to have color in the printed versions is also fair game. Simply put, color covers are about a third of the cost involved with postage making up another third, making those the first thing that we have to look at cutting. We will also consider whether those opting for snail mail delivery rather that email delivery should have a different dues structure. While nothing is cast in stone on these issues as I write, we hope to have a consensus resolution on how we will address this problem to announce at the next meeting. While the fiscal realities are a bit of a downer, we remain upbeat and excited about the number and type of events that we have available to us as a club. That is, of course, the most important issue for us: doing everything we can to have events that allow each of you to participate, enjoy and learn about the beautiful cars that we all drive. I look forward to seeing each of you at upcoming meetings. Until then, keep those Caddy’s and LaSalles between the white lines! Kent Directors Message Kent A. Rowald I initially want to thank Will Lamb for his service to the club over the last several years as Regional Director and encourage him to stay involved. His efforts, including the vast majority of the work done on the Lafayette Interregional Meet, have always been much appreciated but under-recognized. To Will I offer the heartfelt thanks of the entire membership for your tireless efforts to keep the club not just going, but thriving and growing. I also want to thank each of you who have expressed your confidence and support for me through your votes as reflected in my election as Regional Director. I will certainly do everything I can to keep the club running efficiently and work to meet as many of your expectations as possible. In that regard, please do not hesitate to call, write, email or otherwise communicate with me so that I will know what you want to see the club do. If you have a complaint, let me know and I’ll do what I can to solve the problem. If I can’t solve the problem, I’ll let you know why. If you have a proposed solution, that would be even better. Best of all would be if you not only have a solution to any problem, but are willing to do the work to affect the solution! Please note that this is a democratic club. We will try to address the needs and desires (and there is a difference!) of all club members. For example, a few members can’t meet on Sundays. Therefore, I anticipate that we will continue to have some meetings on Saturdays, although the majority of the meetings will continue to be on the first Sunday of each month. Obviously we also have changes to accommodate various events. A classic example is that the first meeting I chair as Regional Director will be on July 10 rather than July 3 so that we can avoid infringing upon July 4th plans of the members. The whole point is that we will do what we can to accommodate the most people in the club and, if you happen to be one of the persons that can’t make a meeting due to a schedule change, please realize that the change was NOT aimed at you, but rather at addressing an overriding problem. Another issue that has been poignantly brought to my attention is that we now have members from far-flung areas, including areas as far away as Lafayette, Louisiana. In fact, in my haste to get something about the interregional tour to our editor before the press deadline for the last Gulf Star, I inadvertently left out two points that were on my outline – a thanks to those of our members in that area that were out in force to support the IRM and a thanks to our sponsors of that event. Moreover, because I was playing club photographer when the awards at the Mustang Sally’s car show were announced, I managed to note only those winners which were announced during the concurrently held interregional awards banquet. As a result, I missed not only the precise categories of that show, but even worse, I missed that several other members of the Cadillac LaSalle Club won awards in that car show. In addition to the sweep in the pre-50’s street rod category and the Pratt’s award in the 50’s category (not 50’s rod category), Brady Como took a 1st place in the 1950-59 category. If others won awards that I don't know about, I apologize for not getting you listed here. Unfortunately, I was unaware of that fact until after we had already gone to press. A huge MEA CULPA is in order for each of those gaffes in the article, and I offer it here. Along those same lines, we need help with the content of the Gulf Star. I beseech each of you to write something, anything, about a topic that interests you. I dare say that if it interests you, it will be of interest to others in the club. While I am a word merchant by trade, I simply don’t have time to write a lot of articles for the Gulf Star. Brian Fogarty, our editor par excellance, likewise has a limited amount of time to devote to this daunting task. You don’t have to rival Shakespeare: give us what you have and Brian can massage it into a masterpiece and do so much faster than if he was writing it from scratch. Moreover, the Gulf Star will then reflect better what you want to read rather than what a few consistent contributors throw out here in an effort to fill column space! OK, I know that I was the only one filling column space – everyone else was writing about topics near and dear to their hearts in every one of their articles. In an effort to address the last second posting of the Gulf Star, I have asked Brian to move up the submission dates by a week or so in order to give us more time to proof the editions and get them to you with a little more time to react. We will continue to post at least part of them on the website (www.gcrcadillaclasalleclub.com for those of you who haven’t visited it) so that you can get them there within a day or so of their going to print. At the least, we will try to keep the upcoming events schedule on both the website and in the Gulf Star up to date and hopefully include at least the next TWO meetings in each edition. If you have suggestions on things to do or places to meet, know of upcoming events that would be of interest to Old Car Guys, Young Car Enthusiasts, Women Having an Appreciation of Clunkers and/or Klassics (“WHACK”), general automotive information or items of interest to or about members, let us know so we can get the word out. By the way, it is up to you to decide if the Clunkers and/or Klassics in the WHACK acronym above describes the cars or the guys who tend to tinker, caress and drive them! So that you will not be surprised if we make a few changes in the near future, I want you to be aware that as a club, we are in good shape financially, historically having our treasury peak just after membership renewals each year and dropping toward or slightly below the $1000 mark just prior to renewal time. While we subsidize a few events each year, the biggest expense by far is the Gulf Star. We are doing everything we can to hold down the expense of the newsletter, but it costs more to print and mail that newsletter than the yearly dues for each member. As many of you know, the car clubs in the Dallas area have been fortunate enough to participate in running the Pate Swap Meet for many years, which has provided them with substantial income to subsidize their dues and events. We made up the difference with dealership sponsorships early in our club history and, when those were discontinued for reasons known only to the dealerships, we were fortunate to find events that would give us sponsorship money to bring our cars for special events. One such recent event was the Grand Opening of the new Peacock dealership on I-45 North. Another such event was the meeting at the new Richmond city hall just of 59 at Highway 6. If you know of an event that could use the grace and beauty of our cars as an attraction and would be willing to give us a stipend to attend, please let us know so that we can continue to coordinate those efforts in order to keep the costs of membership as low as possible. Depending on what we can get lined up, we will have to consider other changes as well to insure our long-term financial stability. We do have several possible events that we are considering that would help us financially, but they will take the dedication and participation of our club members. One such possible event that we will need to respond to soon is an invitation by the Rice athletic department to host a car show, open to all makes and models, in the parking lot of Rice stadium in conjunction with one of the Rice football games this coming season. I will be polling each of you regarding whether you would help run such an event so that I can determine whether we want to accept the invitation to help host and run that event. As envisioned, we would run the entire car show portion of the event while Rice ran the football game portion and provided the security. We would take care of the registrations, judging and awards, with the awards being presented during halftime of the football game. Since we would be proving the manpower and actively seeking out participation by other car clubs in the area (in the form of entries), we would keep the majority of the registration fees, making this a potentially lucrative undertaking for the club that could become an annual event. Once again, I hope that I can live up to your expectations as Regional Director and thank you for your votes, congratulations and those couple of condolences emails as well! See you on July 10! Directors Message W.Y. Lamb With the Texas Inter-Regional Meet & Cajun Tour safely and successfully behind us, it is now time to focus on local club business. This writing shall also be my last Lame Duck Epistle as your outgoing Director. OK, I know I said the same thing last month! I simply didn t look closely enough at my calendar as we do indeed have one more meeting before our new slate of officers take over the reins. Notwithstanding, as you are aware our annual elections will be held Sunday, June 5th at our 10th Annual club Barbeque which will be held at the Medley s shop in Pasadena. (Additional information herein) Be sure to make this most important meeting and support the candidates of your choice. Finally, I wish to thank the Board of Directors & Officers for their long-time support and above all, the membership for allowing me the opportunity to serve. Later and happy motoring …. Will Directors Message W.Y. Lamb Just when you thought I might have run out of ink - SURPRISE! Here I am once again with my monthly Directors Message, which has been my routine going on for over four years. OK, I know what some of you are thinking! Just when you thought I had driven my Caddy into the sunset, here we go again. Relax - Not to worry, it's only temporary. The reason you see my name in print again is because we had a snafu in not getting the slate of qualified candidates published in last month's newsletter. This is mandated by our Bylaws. Due in part to recent comments and criticisms (which, for the most part, were out of context and largely without fact) as to how our club has been run under my tutelage, I felt it best to err on the side of prudence and to continue abiding by the rules. Accordingly, your Board, by unanimous decision of those present at our last meeting, passed a motion to delay the elections until the June 5th meeting to allow for the posting of the slate of candidates to be published in the Gulf Star, which is duly noted herein. This date also coincides with our annual club Bar-B-Que that will be held at Duane and Jenny Medley's shop in Pasadena. Be sure to mark you calendar for this annual gathering. Regarding our Texas IRM and Cajun Tour in Lafayette, you still have time to register! Dash Plaques and Ditty Bags have already been ordered and we welcome you to attend the festivities. The date is May 19th and judging from early registrations (over 65 at press time), I anticipate the best attendance ever for an IRM. We have even signed up folks from Florida, California, Missouri and Sweden. So be sure to brought yourself on over, Sha and pass a good time! Looking forward to seeing you in Cajun Country! Will
Directors Message Be sure to mark your calendar for April 2nd for our monthly club meeting which will be held at Street Dreams. We will conduct our annual election of officers so don’t miss this opportunity to support your club. A list of candidates is published in this issue and are also on the website. Be sure to attend this most important meeting. As mentioned earlier in this column, I have decided not to seek reelection as your Director for another term. I have really enjoyed carrying the club’s banner and representing the membership these last several years. And, I appreciate the vote of confidence I have received from many of our members. While I intend to remain an active participant in club affairs and serving on the board, I feel the time is ripe for new ideals and direction for our clubs future. It truly has been a ‘nice ride’ for me personally and I wish to thank all of the members who helped us in achieving a number of goals which were set early in my tenure as Director. In closing, please be sure to sign up for the Texas IRM & Cajun Tour on May 19th. If you plan on attending, please have your registration forms in by April 1st as we need a firm head count by that date so we may order the necessary goodies and dash plaques. My ‘thanks’ to all. Later and happy motoring …. Will Directors Message Three action packed and fun filled events are just around the corner! For our March 6th meeting and car show at Sugar Land Town Square - be sure to come early. Car placement begins at 11:15 AM and the photo session starts after our meeting. Our host, STLS Management, has asked us to bring a cardboard diaper (or similar) for our cars! Even a towel of sufficient size will work given the short time we will have them on display. NOTE: You will not be allowed to stage your car if you don’t have a diaper, so do come prepared. Sorry, no exceptions. And yes, I am referring to YOU too! We have invited the Olds and Buick folks to join us so please pass the word. Lunch will be served around 12:15 and club meetings can start any time after lunch. STLS will also compliment our lunch (Perry’s Steak House) for the first (40) or so persons. Come early as tickets are available to all nameplates, i.e., (Caddy, LaSalle, Buick, Olds, and others) on a first come, first served basis. Our club meeting for April will be held at Street Dreams - (Saturday, April 2nd) so plan on making this most important meeting as we vote for officers and directors. A list of qualified candidates is published in this issue of the Star and is listed on the website. Rounding out the events for the Spring season is our long awaited and much anticipated Texas IRM and Cajun Tour which will be held May 19th ~21st in Lafayette, LA. If you have not made your reservations …well, you better get on the ball as our events are filling fast. Check our website for more information. Later and happy motoring … Will
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