From the Driver’s Seat – Nov2018
November 2018 President’s Message
Wow, just like that, a new face on the Driver’s Seat page. In a way, I find it hard to believe that so suddenly a transition has just taken place. With my 10th anniversary of club membership on the very near horizon, I suppose I have enough under my belt for some reflection about my time as a member and where I see myself as your new chief executive.
I find myself in leadership of not only an older, well established Corvette club, but also a club with a large number of members much junior in tenure than myself. My detective background is cause for my curiosity and my earlier engineering training made numbers important to me. I have looked at our current roster and have found nearly half (42%) have been members for five years or less. That is quite a number. That 42% has known our most recent board of directors as their only board since joining.
We have all been comfortable with the stability we have experienced. Each month, our business meetings had the same players giving reports about our club, its finances and its activities. We happily attended each month and went on many cool runs and caravans with our only concern being where we would meet with a club of our size. While we said good-bye to a few members from time to time, we kept our membership maxed-out and to this day keep attracting more new friends who want to join us in our Corvette adventures. Still all good in my opinion, but some members with much more longevity recall different times when we had fewer rules to help us manage our number of members. I believe that while we may think we are “just a car club”, we are a fixture in our community with a reputation to protect for the sake of our future as a club. Our by-laws give us the focus we need for success.
So then, out of nowhere, our club has experienced an exodus to greener pastures by a large number of not just members, but a big slice of our board, as well as our most senior member. But guess what, we have our November meeting in the history book, our November activities were fun, and our December meeting is at hand. The SCVCC lives.
Our club has not missed a beat with the loss of half of our board since we have, if I might say so, good people remaining. We also have a great new VP (Jeff Hernandez) on board and three new volunteers (Donna Webster, Don Ceo and Karen Jewett) who are now in the Activities Committee. My thanks to them for being team players in filling the void we suddenly experienced.
Elke Couples, Mark Ware, Deana Shaver, and our new “Boss Lady” Judy Woodings remain as my current backbone with Anthony Bachmura also soon departing to Arizona. We are at the mid-point of the current club year and elections for the 2019 – 2020 club year will be here sooner than we can imagine. Other changes might occur then…or they might not. That remains to be seen.
But here we are, Thanksgiving is behind us with Christmas and New Years fast approaching, and hey, even with the changes, we still have a vibrant and exciting Corvette club and I am looking forward to all that we have ahead. We still need some help in the areas of Communications and Newsletter positions and I know there are some in our midst who can take over those positions and dangles. If a poor farm boy from Washington can be elected to the board of the greatest Corvette club in town, surely one of you can help us all “Save the Wave”!
Mike
