CSAGSI President's Message
January 2002
Fellow Members.
As our Society enters 2002, I want you to know that we are in good condition, as genealogy societies are measured. We are financially sound, with enough to pay our bills, to finish the many projects we are working on, and to continue to bring quality speakers and events to our membership. We are physically sound with an ever increasing active membership, many of them being active volunteers. All of our Board of Director and Officer positions are filled with enthusiastic volunteers. All of our committee chair positions are filled with the exception of a Program chairperson. At this time we have about 15 speakers on various topics waiting for an opening in order to deliver their message to us. What we don’t have is someone to coordinate these speakers to match them up with our meeting dates. We probably will not be able to provide speaking dates to all of them until our 2003 Conference, since we have four basic meeting per year. If one of you is able to step up and coordinate these speakers, please let us know.
Our Special Projects Chairman, George Rokos, is in charge of coordinating the various projects our Board of Directors deems to be of value to our Society and to others who are searching for their Czech and Slovak Roots. We currently have five projects in the works and at various stages of development. I would like to ask our membership for some help in completing these projects. George will still be in charge overall, but we need some people to become Project Managers to work on a specific project to completion. We have enough volunteers to do the actual projects, but we need a person to take charge of one of the 5 projects to coordinate the volunteer’s efforts and to eliminate our doing the same work twice. If you are able to help in any way, please see or contact George Rokos or his wife Louise.
Our Christmas party was on December 1, and a great time was had by all. The Czech food was delicious, and plentiful. The entertainment provided by Mike & Sally was a wonderful mixture of tunes. Some Czech, some American, some Christmas tunes (koledy), etc. all played on a large variety of musical instruments. Everyone’s toes were tapping in time to the music and many were singing right along with Mike & Sally. Our thanks go out to the Christmas party committee: Gladys Wheeler, Bob & Gloria Hosna, and Bob & Audrey Panek for a job well done.
Our Spring workshop, March 23, 2002 will welcome four Kroje experts from Minnesota, Don & Jeanette Pafko and Arnie & Deb Ziskovsky. They will bring their considerable collection of Kroje from the Czech Republic and from the Slovak Republic. They will display these kroje and explain the meanings behind them, both from a folklore and from a historical point of view. It will be held in our Riverside meeting room.
Our January meeting will be a special one. We will have the daughter of a survivor of the town of Lidice, Czechoslovakia. For those unfamiliar with Lidice, it was a village just west of Prague that stood up to the Nazis during WW II. After an incident that made the Nazis furious, they killed all of the men, sent the children and women to concentration camps to die, and then they burned and leveled the village removing all traces of it from the face of the earth. This lady, Jerri Zbiral, has documented this atrocity through her mother, the survivor, and provide us with a powerful video film of these events, both during and after the war.
I hope all of you have had a wonderful Holiday Season, and were able to spend some time with your families enjoying each others company, as that is really the best present to get.
I hope many of you enjoyed corresponding with your relatives in Europe during this season, or were able to visit in person. I look forward to 2002 being a great year for our society.
Bill
Read the October, 2001 President's message.
Read the September, 2000 President's message.
Read the August, 2000 President's message.
Read the September, 1999 President's message.
Read the August, 1999 President's message.
Read the January, 1999 President's message.
Read the July, 1998 President's message.
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Last updated: February 20, 2002