President
President's
Corner
By Bancroft McKittrick
The Annual Meeting and Luncheon held at the Manchester Country Club on Saturday, November 10, 2001 were a tremendous success.  The Annual Meeting closed the year on a variety of the chapter’s activities, nominated and filled vacant Board of Director slots and nominated and approved the chapter’s officers for the coming year.  The luncheon officially kicked off the next year of chapter activities.  Congressman John E. Sununu was our luncheon speaker and he provided an excellent presentation on where we are and where we are going, as a country, in light of the tragedy of September 11.  We were delighted to have Congressman Sununu as our luncheon speaker because he has reliably supported TROA on military and veterans legislative issues and he has been a consistent friend of TROA-NH. 

As we look back over the year, the chapter has accomplished significant results in a number of areas and we should all be justifiably proud. 

First, TROA-NH was recognized this year by TROA-National as a runner up in the “Jumbo Chapter” category for Chapter of the Year.  There are four categories of chapters based on size and TROA-NH is a Category I Chapter. This is the largest category and is defined as a chapter with membership of 900+ members.  A lot of hard work and effort by your Board of Director’s and chapter’s officers made this recognition possible.  This recognition also tells us that we are on the right track and by continuing to target recruiting, luncheons, legislative issues and scholarships our chapter will continue to be successful.  Our goal for the upcoming year is to again qualify for the Category I award as “Chapter of the Year.” 

Second, our recruiting campaign for the year will end on 31 December 2001.  Mike McLean has led a superb effort that added 85 new members to our rolls, thus far.  Recruiting is the key to our future success and our chapter will continue to actively recruit new members. 

Third, our luncheon attendance has grown again this year.  Mike McLean continues to do his usual outstanding job in lining up some terrific speakers, the venues have been interesting and equitably spread throughout the state and the food has been excellent.  These luncheons are a great opportunity to meet and greet our fellow officers, as well as, encourage our younger retirees to join us.  A number of our newly joined officers have commented to me that the luncheon programs sold them on joining TROA-NH. 
military retirees over 65 have only Medicare to provide for their health care needs.  John Graham and Dick Dennis have done an excellent job as our State and National Legislative Liaisons, respectively and helped our chapter focus on our Congressional delegation to keep the heat on and to pass this very important legislation. 

Fifth, our Scholarship Program is an on-going success.  Ably led by Cal Hosmer with assistance from Ray Helgemoe and Bob Ness, our chapter continues to support this very important program.  Currently there are 10 students on scholarship, repayments are being received on schedule and chapter support of the Scholarship Fund regularly meets our annual goals.  As a result of the success in Scholarship Program donations, the chapter has raised the loan amount available to students from $1250.00 to $1500.00.  Please continue to support this very worthwhile program as we provide for the educational opportunities of tomorrows leaders. 

As we enter the new year, I look forward to working with you to continue to build on our success and to proudly serve in out TROA-NH chapter. 

Semper fi


Guest Speakers Wanted
By Ron James
We are looking for Chapter members who would enjoy sharing their military experiences with high school students via an assembly forum. Those of you who were part of historic military events like the Normandy invasion, the Battle of the Bulge, the North African campaign, the invasion of Sicily, special ops missions, submarine duty, convoy missions, PT boat duty, WASP participation in the war effort, Guadalcanal, POW experiences, concentration camp liberations, involvement in the surrender of the Japanese in Tokyo bay, Flying Tiger missions, flying the Hump, undersea warfare missions, covert missions that you can talk about…and the list could go on and on. If you did something that our high school students should know about from a historical perspective versus what Hollywood gave us in an epic, wide-screen, blockbuster movie designed to sell tickets rather than be factually correct…we would like to hear from you. Please contact Ron James by phone at (603) 279-4530; by letter to: 20 High St, Meredith, NH 03253; or by  e-mail at: rjames@metrocast.net with your desire to participate in this program. If you know of any friends who are not TROA members who might like to participate, please give Ron their name and phone number so he can contact them directly. 

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