President’s Letter to Membership

November Issue 2003

With much regret and sorrow, I must report to you on two significant resignations at our Museum. We have been an organization of volunteers from our beginning back in 1994 and have all worked for the success of our Museum. Our volunteer efforts have been in varying roles, levels, and capacities, and they have brought our organization to new levels of growth. Through this time period of almost ten years, we have naturally had our disagreements, personality conflicts, and differences of opinion, but all of these hopefully were for the betterment of the organization.

We have always been or have become passionate in our need for success but at times didn’t see the bigger picture or wouldn’t hear what the next person had to say or what they could offer. We are all guilty of this and now we will all suffer as a result of this attitude of non-communication and lack of respect for experience. Before the rumors abound, as President I must inform you of Ron Freitag’s resignation as Vice-President, and Dan Gallo as Director of Advertising.

These people were key players in our advancement and will be sorely missed by me and obviously their influences will be missed throughout our organization. In time, maybe, yes, these wounds will heal, our organization will move forward with new people, but to me I’ve lost three good friends or I should really say, the Museum has lost three good friends.

I wish them all well and naturally wish that none of this had ever happened, that there had been more and better levels of communication between all parties concerned. I had also hoped that bygones could be bygones and that we could reach some amiable solutions to our immediate differences. I truly feel that we should look at the successes we had and the differences we made before these losses came upon us. Is such a loss really worth it? Does anybody feel good about the loss of these people? We should all be learning how to compromise and communicate, and to keep the goals of the Museum before us. We have allowed our personal missions and egos to cloud our actions as leaders of the Museum. Contrary to what some may say, these people were contributors to our growth. Good luck to them.