Welcome to the new year! I sincerely hope you all had a great holiday period. While the nation currently freezes, I know that most of our members have faced much colder and tougher conditions. I am proud to be one of you!
The OAEA Vice President and I have started working on recruiting issues, hoping to bring in new (and younger) members from all aspects of the Antarctic interest spectrum. Following the Colorado reunion, I attended the Antarctican Society gathering in nearby Boulder, and there got some valuable feedback from ex NSF/USARP/USAP Society members who are also members of the OAEA who didn’t attend the Colorado Springs reunion as they had the word that OAEA reunions were more “ex-military” oriented. Having attended both and having experienced both backgrounds, I can say there is some truth to that feedback. Early on, our OAEA core membership did come from the military side of early days of Operation Deep Freeze support, but that is past. In order to stay viable and meaningful, we have to shift the paradigm so that all will feel that membership in OAEA will be a meaningful experience for them. One of the ways to help us achieve that is using your social network connections to let people know we exist for all Antarcticans.
With that said, we do continue to add new people. Last quarter saw 8 new members: New members: Wellington Jones (VXE-6 74-77), Richard Brzozowski (NMCB-71 73-74), Christopher Shade (USAP 15-16), William Johnson, Sr (NSFA Winter Over 73-74), Elizabeth Chase Sargent and Mark Chase (Associate members, son and daughter of Life member Barry Chase), Robert Raincock (Antarctic cruise ship naturalist 22-25), David Sherbs, Jr. (USCGC POLAR STAR 15-19). Our present active membership is 1330 persons.
We depend on donations to fund operations. We received $345 to the General Fund and $495 to the Scholarship Fund, totaling $840 in donations. Thanks go out to Life members Harry Grinder, Larry Lackey, William Rouzer; New members Mark Chase, Robert Raincock, Wellington Jones, William Johnson, Sr; New England Chapter for 3 memorial donations; and non-member Michael Chase.
We are seeking people with administrative type skills to step forward and learn some of the OAEA support jobs; specifically, OAEA webmaster and Membership database administrator. For the webmaster, some knowledge of IT is helpful, but much of the website maintenance is basic word processing. For the membership database administrator, you can get by with spreadsheet and word processing skills. Training will be available for both!
We welcome any inputs or suggestions. You can use our virtual public suggestion box on our Comments/Suggestions page in the online newsletter. If you would prefer to contact me directly, use the website Contact Form.
See you in the Spring!
Wayne White
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