As of November 7, 2012 I have been President for 135 days. A lot of things have happened in this short
time. In July we had our Board of Directors meeting in Washington DC. (The minutes of that meeting appeared
on p. 10 of the Sept/Oct issue of The Graybeards). If you haven’t read them, please do. Be informed
as to what your Board of Directors and Officers are doing.
On 10 October 2012, we held our annual Board/Membership meeting in St. Louis MO. The minutes of that
meeting are published in this issue (see p. 12). Again, please read them.
I thank Director Jim Fountain and his committee for doing an outstanding job putting this meeting together.
Incidentally, Jim is termed out this year and will not be able to run again for the Board. We will miss
Jim a great deal; he has done a great job as a Director.
We had an excellent member turnout, and they took part in the membership portion of our meetings. Let
me explain that.
In past membership meetings, most of the dialogue, motions, and seconds of the motions came from the
Board of Directors, not the members. At the beginning of this meeting, I announced that I would appreciate
it if all motions and seconds to those motions came from the membership, not the Board of Directors. It
made for a very interesting meeting, as the members took part in the meeting and made it a worthwhile event.
Members introduced some very good ideas and discussed several items of interest to them.
I was extremely pleased with that meeting. As long as I chair these meetings we will use the same format.
Our recruiting efforts are coming along slowly, but well. Building our membership base will take time.
Tom Stevens and Sonny Edwards are working extremely hard to increase our membership.
Sonny introduced a new “Recruiting Guide Pamphlet” at our St. Louis meeting. I hope we can get a copy
out to all of the Chapters and Departments. It is well written and it will help you a great deal in your
recruiting efforts.
In my previous message to you, I mentioned the Executive Director of the VFW and his willingness to help
us recruit. He has offered us 10’ X 10’ of space at their convention next July in DC so we can set up a
recruiting station. I appreciate that very much. Tom Stevens and Sonny Edwards are working on the logistics
for that now.
I am trying to develop a simple, but enticing, ad that we can place in the newsletters, magazines, etc.
of other VSO and Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard associations. There are hundreds of associations
that have some type of media they send out to their members, e.g., the First Marine Division and the 2nd
Army Division Associations. A large number of their members are Korean War veterans or veterans who have
served on the peninsula of Korea since the armistice was signed.
If any one of you is artistic enough to put a recruiting ad together for those publications, please do
so. Send it to me. The best one will be placed in The Graybeards with a write-up of the person who
created it. And, it will be printed in any of the publications I mentioned above that will be willing to
publish it.
I have told the Board of Directors that we cannot leave any stone unturned when it comes to recruiting.
I need them to think out of the box for ideas that would help our efforts. I urge all of you who are reading
this message to do the same. Send your ideas to me, Tom Stevens, or Sonny Edwards.
Tom Stevens has introduced an incentive recruiting plan. Please get involved in this contest. Incidentally,
last year to date we recruited 741 new members. This year to date we have recruited 815 new members, 150
of whom were recruited since we started our emphasis on recruiting. Twenty-two were recruited in the last
10 days!
About The Graybeards: I am still working on some grants for this; I do not expect any results
along these lines for quite a while. The effort may be a complete failure, but I have to try. I do not intend
to sit back and wait to see if grants are available.
By the time this message is published, I will have sent out to all of our board members, appointed staff,
and officers a rate chart for advertisements in The Graybeards. I will have asked them to take a
few copies of The Graybeards and go out in their home towns to their friends or folks they do business
with and ask them to purchase an ad in The Graybeards.
I will be asking each person to obtain five ads. That will equate to about 150 ads of all sizes. The
income from those ads will take at least some of the financial burden off our dues paying members.
Remember, we budget approximately $170,000.00 to pay for The Graybeards each year. This comes
out of your dues money. If we can eliminate this expenditure, think of all the good things we can do with
this money. Scholarships perhaps, donations to worthy causes, etc. And, of course, it will make us a very
healthy financial organization.
If any of you wish to participate in this venture, please contact me. I will send you the information
you need. I will beworking with Advertising Manager Frank Bertulis and Editor Art Sharp on this. Of course,
we need to be cognizant of how many ads Art can print in order to accommodate postal service requirements
and avoid compromising the quality and amount of the magazine’s content.
My wife and I were invited to have breakfast at the White House on November 12th with President Obama
and his wife, along with several other heads of veterans’ organizations. After the breakfast we went to
the Tomb of the Unknowns to lay a wreath in honor of all our fallen comrades. From there we moved to our
National Memorial on the Mall for another wreath laying ceremony.
We will be introducing a new ceremony called “Turn towards Busan.” At this event, we merely turn towards
the east and salute while Taps is played. In Korea they will be doing the same thing to memorialize the
invasion at the Busan perimeter. Tom McHugh will be heading this up. Tom is also termed out this year. We
will certainly miss all the great things that he has done as a Director.
Sadly, Art Griffith has chosen not to run again. Art has done a bang-up job on our fundraising events.
He has brought in over $200,000.00 dollars as our fundraising chairman. Many thanks—and WELL DONE, Art.
Tom Stevens has decided to run again. I am grateful for that decision; Tom is dedicated to our recruiting
program. Good luck, Tom.
On November 17th, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point honored all veterans at the Army vs. Temple
football game. They focused on Korean War veterans. I represented the KWVA at halftime.
In closing, I remind you that we are all recruiters. Now, we are all advertisement executives as well.
This is our KWVA. It can—and will—go on for generations to come if we make sure it does. The means are in
our hands; all we need to do is execute them.
We cannot let our fallen comrades down. We must assure that the KWVA is a permanent VSO forever.
Thank you for your support, and God Bless you and your families
James E. "Jim" Ferris National President, KWVA/US