3-10-2001 Minutes

Saturday, March 10, 2001 @ 09:30 HRS Meeting Called to order at Brewer residence, 13070 Triadelphia Road, Ellicott City, MD

Those in attendance; Bill Brewer, John English, John Mack, Rick Bennett, Tom Jones, Guy Ward and Len Gordon, who is the coordinator for the DDG-17 organization ( I can't spell Cunningham the way Len did so this is my best shot with the DDG-17 thing ) and asked to attend our meeting by Bill to help us with the start up of our association.

Bill Brewer, our host, opened the discussions concerning the establishment of the USS Waddell DDG-24 Association and setting the date for our first reunion. Basically our first order of business was to elect a board of directors to run the organization and from that board in turn elected the operating officers. We established that directors shall establish policy and implement the decision of the board. There is to be seven directors that make up our board and the president will only vote to break a tie. It was decided that with a seven member board that four will constitute a quorum. It was also decided that to be a Director in our organization one must have served aboard the USS Waddell, DDG-24 for at least thirty days and be Honorably discharged or separated.

The following are Directors of the USS Waddell DDG-24 Association;

Rick Bennett, Bill Brewer, John English, Tom Jones, John Mack, Guy Ward and a director to be announced (TBA)

Rick Bennett was appointed our permanent association web master and for allowing us to use the USS WADDELL (www.usswaddell.com) web site as our official association web site was given a permanent seat on the board as owner and operator of the copyrighted web site. It was also decided that the terms of the board are to be three years in length where by two members are elected per year at our annual meeting/reunion. The following Directors have a three year term and will serve until 2004; Bill Brewer and John English, the following have a two year term and will serve until 2003; Tom Jones and John Mack. The following will have a one year term and serve until 2002; Guy Ward and the additional director TBA, which will be either appointed by the president and approved by the board to serve the open seat or elected at our association meeting. I would certainly hope that Rick can find and able-bodied seaman or snipe before our second organizational meeting. I would suggest that Jim Yarrington, MMC, also a Plank Owner, be asked to fill this prestigious position and by copy of the Email I am asking him to formally submit his request to Rick Bennett. (It's OK Jim cause Rick can do a telephone interview). Plus he lives in San Diego, CA the local for our second reunion. Dah........

The Board of Directors elected the following Association officers;

President - Rick Bennett

Vice President - Tom Jones

Treasurer - Bill Brewer

Secretary - Guy Ward

Historian - John Mack

Director - John English

Bill will find a national bank to hold our projected funds and John English and John Mack will also be signatory to any and all accounts.

John Mack will act as our official association historian and reunion events chairman with the aid of John English.

It was decided that Baltimore, MD would be the site for our first reunion and that San Diego, CA would be the host for the second reunion site. Rick and Bill were to narrow the number of host hotels to three and try an negotiate a reasonable room rate and have something for us within a couple of weeks.

Tom Jones will develop our ship's data base and try and locate the estimated 2,700 sailors that served aboard the USS Waddell from 1964 to 1992. Tom will soon be soliciting us to contact the shipmates that we do know and start a reverse pyramid of contact to help amass this impressive data base. It is quite apparent to me that Tom gained most of his organizational skills from selling Amway in central Michigan.

Any way, we did break for lunch but I don't recall how we broke up our discussions, cause I didn't take very good notes. Never the less, we did enjoyed a healthy salad and a hearty and bountiful bowl or two of crab chowder prepared with loving care and road kill by our host. I brought some Amish spinach bread to top it off and we all belched delightfully throughout the afternoon.

The most exciting part of the day is when we broke for dinner to celebrate Bill's wife Sandy's Birthday at Kelsey's in Ellicott City where we ate the local fare. All of us out of towners ate the famous crab cakes while the birthday girl Sandy opted for meat loaf. I guess you can lead a horse to water but you can't make 'em drink. Any way, she did have a cake and we all sang and toasted to her health and wished her well. An enjoyable evening had by all.

Sunday we all went to the Two TTs Dinner and had a breakfast feast and afterwards the participants started the departing ritual which signaled that this first meeting was history. John did you get that?

Oh, Rick.....I have started my research on our by-laws and I plan to include flannel in the dress code part. So there......I think that I have enough vote to take my flannel platform plank to the annual business meeting.

Respectfully submitted,

Guy M. Ward, MM3 Retired '64 - '67 (AKA Guido)

Secretary USS Waddell DDG-24 Association

E-mail to Rick J. Bennett with questions or comments about this web site.