President's LetterA Message From 2011-2012 LPBA President Gary L. Evans Dear LPBA Members and Enthusiasts: My lovely wife Penny and I first met in late 1999, the same year I attended my first LPBA meeting. I will never forget then-President Cecile Hatfield’s graciousness and congeniality during the LPBA meeting in New Orleans. Faced with the challenges of starting a new aviation law firm in 1999, I missed the next couple of meetings. But a great LPBA experience at Sun Valley, Idaho during 2000 made me want to attend more meetings. Penny accompanied me to the Breezy Point meeting during the Summer of 2001, where I popped the question. Many of our members and attendees shared that memorable moment with us, one of many LPBA moments that we will never forget. Penny graciously accepted, and we were married during the 2002 meeting in Whistler, British Columbia. Errol Kantor affectionately agreed to stand up for me during our wedding ceremony. Penny and I have not missed an LPBA meeting since 2002, and it has been our privilege to sponsor every meeting. Although we have met in many different locales, the LPBA meeting experience, featuring beautiful destinations, appealing accommodations, entertaining and informative CLEs, and most importantly, a unique and unparalleled combination of people who share a love of aviation and the law, remains unequaled. The LPBA features none of the stuffiness associated with many similar endeavors, and the tremendous enjoyment, humor, and camaraderie we collectively experience during our meetings remains unequaled as well. Serving as your President during the next year is a great privilege. As we work towards the 2013 meetings, we have adopted many new initiatives that will help us reinvigorate our membership, the true lifeblood of LPBA. With the help of an almost all volunteer staff, including Vince Allen, our primary source of IT expertise, we have overhauled the way we maintain our membership information, and the way we interact with our members. We are letting our members know that they make up the LPBA, and we need your continued participation in every aspect of LPBA’s activities. One of the programs historically used to contact our members has a well-known high rejection rate as a result of it being frequently identified as dreaded “spam.” So we have changed to a program that dovetails nicely with our new membership database. The new system will eventually allow us to make immediate and automatic updates to our on-line membership directory as well. We will be forever grateful to Darik Horn, a computer whiz and friend of Vince Allen, for donating his time to help us implement the new database program. He has given us invaluable assistance and advice that will help us do a much better job of reaching out to both current and former LPBA members. We have also adopted a formal 5-step membership renewal process, meaning that you should be hearing from us more often, as we keep you fully apprised of the goings on at LPBA. Our Executive Director has a new, exclusive karen@lpba.org e-mail address, and we hope you contact Karen or any other LPBA officers or directors if we may be of further assistance to you. This year, we sent hard copy materials to all of the LPBA’s current and former members, materials that include the LPBA “referral” program, asking each member to provide us with referrals to their friends, colleagues, and co-workers who may be interested in joining the LPBA. As part of our new membership renewal campaign, we are also asking all LPBA members to sign up for automatic renewal, a measure certain to assist us into the future. If each existing member merely cultivates only one new member during the year, our ranks will double. Our Winter 2012 meeting was at the Hilton Waikoloa Village on the Big Island of Hawaii. We had perfect weather, excellent accommodations, a superb CLE program, and a spouses program to boot. Our members enjoyed many uniquely Hawaiian experiences, including Helo tours featuring active volcanoes and lava flows, and whale watching. Our Summer 2012 meeting was held at the Kingsmill Resort, in the historic town of Williamsburg, Virginia. Internationally renowned recording artists and Southern Rock and Roll band, The Outlaws, performed in concert especially for LPBA following the Wednesday night cocktail reception and dinner. In addition to an excellent CLE program arranged by your LPBA Journal Editor Gary Allen, we also conducted the always entertaining LPBA Spot Landing demonstration, and much of the fun from many of our meetings can be seen on our Facebook group. Gary Allen and his wife Marie, going far above and beyond their already substantial LPBA involvement, hosted an evening reception for us at their home in the “Burg,” presenting yet another opportunity for relaxation, entertainment, and LPBA camaraderie. Like Williamsburg, one of our goals is to make all LPBA meetings attractive for spouses and children. In February, 2013 we will have the Winter LPBA meeting at the gorgeous Villas of Grand Cypress in Orlando, Florida, adjacent to all of the Orlando area attractions. (http://www.grandcypress.com), which is currently undergoing renovations that we will be some of the first to enjoy! Summer 2013 will find us returning to the fabulous Fairmont Chateau Whistler, British Columbia (http://www.fairmont.com/whistler/). Penny and I are renting the rooftop gazebo once again, and invite all of our LPBA family to renew their wedding vows as we celebrate our 11th anniversary! For those reading this column who are not members, please consider joining so you can share in the benefits of LPBA membership. Annual membership dues are a low $119 per year. You also have the option of paying $250 for a sustaining membership, a concept initiated by our immediate past president Robert Feldman, and one that gives you special recognition in the LPBA Journal, on the LPBA website and at meetings, a link to your website from ours, and the knowledge that you are making a definitive statement of support for the LPBA. You can apply online or you can print out a membership application and send it together with a check for the dues to Lawyer Pilots Bar Association, P.O. Box 1510, Edgewater, MD 21037. You can also fax the application to (410) 571-1780. If you have any questions, please call our Executive Director, Karen Griggs at (410) 571-1750. I look forward to meeting as many of you as I can during my term as President. If you have any ideas or suggestions as to what direction LPBA should take, where our meetings should be held, or what we can do to improve our organization, please email me or call me at any time at evans@texasaviationlaw.com (832) 541-8037. Also, please e-mail us the names and contact information for any of your colleagues whom you think might be interested in becoming members of LPBA. Thank you for your support and participation in all things LPBA! Sincerely, Sincerely, Gary L. Evans LPBA President 2012-2013
|
|
Contact us with your comments and suggestions at LPBA | Copyright 2008 by Lawyer Pilots Bar Association | Web Design by Mary Fisher Design