Tampa Chapter
Sons of the American
Revolution
May 2010
Compatriot,
The next
meeting of the Tampa Chapter will be held this Saturday, May 15th in the private meeting room of the Piccadilly Cafeteria, located at
This month we welcome Jim Schnur as our
speaker. Jim will be discussing the situation in
We hope you’ll join us. Guests are most welcome.
Regards,
Kevin Yarnell
Secretary,
Congratulations! New
Patriot Ancestors Proven
We congratulate Walter Young, Sr. and Robert Koehler on
their recently approved Supplemental applications. Walter proved his ancestory to Pvt Silas Veatch of
And Several New Members!
We welcome Todd Vernon, Richard Jenks, Walter Young, Jr., Ralph Young, Garett Brown, Scott Brown, and Doug Brown to our chapter. Their memberships were approved this past month.
ROTC Awards
|
Pictured here are the cadets honored
during the luncheon. |
Thanks to everyone that supported the JROTC luncheon last month. We had a capacity crowd which included 8 cadets and their guests. We still have a few schools that will hold their award ceremonies later this month and a representative from our chapter will present our award at that time. When we finish for the year, we will have presented 21 JROTC medals. And, thanks to the work of Dwight Tetrick, 4 Silver ROTC awards to college units in the area. |
State Society Meeting
The Florida
Society held its spring Board of Management and Annual meeting May 7 & 8th
in
Minutes of the April 17, 2010
meeting of the Tampa Chapter SAR
President Lloyd
called the meeting to order at
Members present:
Marty Miller, Allen,
Welcome guests:
Wives: Jeanne Lloyd, Judy Copeland
Other guests: Charles Klug, a prospective
member and 7 cadets and their families (it was a packed dinning room!)
The President
introduced the guests.
The minutes of the
March meeting were approved.
The secretary asked
the membership for help in presenting our ROTC awards to a few schools not
already covered.
Chuck Copeland, our
treasurer, reported a balance of $2,953.34.
Registrar Alan Bell
reported on his activities. He’ll have 3 supplemental applications heading to
national today.
President Lloyd
asked the color guard to present the colors at a Wounded Warrior ceremony to be
held at
Following up on a
topic from the last meeting President Lloyd announced that John Skillman agreed
to track awards for the chapter. John also bought a set of small revolutionary
war era flags which he donated to the chapter.
In our efforts to
hold some sort of joint event with the
The president won’t
be in attendance at the May meeting but encourage the membership to attend and
enjoy the presentation by Jim Schnur on
Prior to our lunch
dismissal, the president took a few moments to introduce the SAR and its goals
to the guests.
The meeting
recessed for lunch.
Following lunch
President Lloyd introduced Kevin Yarnell who spoke on “Thinking Big Thoughts:
How Enduring Concepts Can Provide Direction in Changing Times”. Kevin first
looked at the term ‘concept’ and explained that a concept is a general idea
derived or inferred from specific instances or occurrences. We learn best when
the material is presented and arranged in a hierarchy. So, rather than learn
just a bunch of facts, we put these facts together in an order that allows us
greater understanding.
This is the real
purpose of a liberal arts education. Many people thing it is a broad education
but it is, instead, a high education and teaches the student that knowledge
must be understood in a hierarchy. Some questions are more important than
others or must be answered first.
With this
background in place the speaker pointed out that we learn concepts by starting
at discrete events and working up. But planning and decisions need to be made
in reverse. We must start with principles and concepts and work down to the
details. Several examples of this were offered including an explanation of how
the idea for this JROTC luncheon starts from the mission of the SAR.
The question then
must be asked, do we see this type of thinking in our leaders today? Do they
start with big thoughts or principles and use these to guide their thinking
down into the details? Unfortunately, the answer to these questions is too
often, no. To illustrate Kevin, to the amusement of the audience referenced the
recent healthcare debate. Not taking a side, he simply asked the listeners to
recall what was debated and noted that it was all details. No one discussed the
big question, “What is the role of government is the area of health care?” He
pointed out that answering this question first settles a large part of the
subsequent questions.
Following two more
examples where big thoughts and principles have not been employed at the outset
by our leaders, Kevin offered two examples where the principles did come first.
The Monroe Doctrine was his first example. The Homestead Act of 1862 was the
second. In both instances general principles were used to as a guide for
working out the details. In the case of the Homestead Act the fact that the
land was offered to anyone willing to work it follows directly from the
statement of equality in our Declaration of Independence.
In concluding the
speaker urged the audience to four actions:
-
Strive
for a ‘higher’ education
-
Tackle
the big questions ourselves
-
Encourage
our friends to think bigger as we discuss issues of our day
-
Vote on
the big thoughts not on sound bites
President Lloyd then
presented the Bronze JROTC award to the cadets.
Kevin won the 50/50 and donated his portion to
the chapter. The treasury was thus enriched by $7.00.
The President led
the recessional, Jack Bolen gave the benediction, and the meeting adjourned at
Respectfully
submitted,
Kevin Yarnell
Chapter Secretary