Issue 41, October 23
We’re amid our second “busy season” of the year at SBMC! Last week we began with our first joint-club committee meeting with Meninak to design our 2016 Veterans day float. Talk about a lot of brain power and patriotism in the room, Ernie Petzrick & Charlie Armstrong were our resident Navy vets present. Then we had Joe Snowberger from the JHNSA (USS ADAMS Naval Warship Museum) joining us to offer equipment they had in storage to potentially contribute to the float. Also, Meninak brought one of their members with strong military ties, Harrison Conyers who heads up the Veterans Division at City Hall in the Mayor’s office. Frank Wallmeyer was present as the reigning VP, thank goodness as he was able to find us a new build location right around the corner from the stadium at KC Petroleum. I had flashbacks to our Civic project with Habijax back in April, as while we’re putting together ideas our resident architect Bill Bishop is sketching out a detailed professional design on a piece of scratch paper.
A big thank you goes out to Gene Bushor this year for his already immense contribution to the float. As you’ve probably heard, the cleanup efforts from Hurricane Matthew are still ongoing. Being one of Jacksonville’s premier tree surgeons and expert, Gene’s company is overwhelmingly busy and every piece of equipment they have is active and in the field. Still, he moved mountains to make his trailer available to us, even though they were using it to haul heavy equipment around to job sights. This was truly a selfless gift and I’ll forever be grateful as we were struggling to find another trailer. Our build day was yesterday which included the lion’s share of the work, so hopefully we just need a few finishing touches and we’re ready for the parade!
We had a few members who brought guests last week that were former Cuban refugees having escaped at young ages. Our speaker John Caulfield was incredibly insightful, afterwards several members told me they found his presentation very interesting and we ran out of time for questions. I can’t recall whether it was Jack Davis or John Martin, but one mentioned their guest remarked Mr. Caulfield was by far the person whom they felt had the best grasp of the history of the Cuban government and what’s transpired.
This week the Southside BUSINESS Men’s Club will host our BUSINESS Expo! Jeanne Maron has worked hard to plan a great event, all door prizes will be brought by the exhibitors and auctioned from each of their tables. I know we have over 20 exhibitors alone, so I hope we’ll have a huge crowd of members present to see what our friends have to offer. We’re headed into a fun-filled sports week with the Jags playing Thursday night in Nashville, and our annual Georgia Florida face off on Saturday, also known as the “Largest Cocktail Party” which is certainly suitable for this organization. Have fun and be safe!
See you Soon,
Patrick Heatherington
president@sbmcjax.com
M 904-449-2858
