Wolverine Chapter Meet in Benton Harbor, Michigan on Saturday, March 9, 2013
Wolverine Chapter Meet in Benton Harbor, Michigan on
Saturday, March 9, 2013
Wolfs Marine Meet in Benton Harbor, Michigan on March 9th, 2013
Wolf's Marine Meet Report by Meet Operations Chairman, Mark Suter
We got real lucky with the weather for the Chapter's first meet of the year. Obviously this was due in part to delaying it by week from when we held it last year. Our host, Warren Wolf suggested we might want to do that so we took his suggestion and, as a result, were given a great day for driving. For the record, the 2nd weekend in March is always the latest available opening in Wolf's Marine's busy schedule for our meet.
The meet had 30 attendees, as indicated by the number of lunches served. We couldn't use the attendance sign-in sheets for the count because at least six people failed to sign in. While I can't call that attendance "good" - out of 128 members, it was significantly up from last year and I'll take that as a positive sign. My appreciation goes out to those who came.
Wolf's Marine was able to supply 3 dozen chairs for our comfort and 4 large tables for our coffee and lunch set-ups and attendance and show-motor registration. That was much appreciated because it eliminated the need to provide any furniture of our own. We had 14 great motors show up for our Peoples' Choice display motor competition. We tried something new for this meet... we had the exhibitor of each of the display motors stand up and give a brief -no longer than 5 minutes - presentation about his or her motor. The information we were looking for could include year produced, brand, model, manufacturer, specifications, distinctive features, condition, history and justification for the show category selected.
The resulting presentations were great and, I think, those in attendance learned a lot from them. The comments I heard after the presentations clearly indicated that the attendees appreciated the extra insight into the collective array of great looking and interesting motors. So we plan to continue this practice at all of our meets. Many thanks to all those people who spent the extra effort to help put together such a great display and share their motor knowledge with the rest of the attendees... it was truly a great learning experience. I might also state that this experience also probably helped the attendees make more intelligent decisions when voting for their Peoples' Choice "favorite motors".
The results of the Peoples' Choice competition are included later in this report. Every motor displayed deservedly won a ribbon... my congratulations go out to the recipients and extra congratulations go to the top winner in each show category. All of you should be proud of your motors... thanks for "sharing them" at this meet.
Thanks also go to Eric Helder for tallying up the Peoples' Choice votes and filling out the ribbons. For those of you that aren't familiar with the process, it is a very consuming job that demands a lot of attention to detail. And, as usual, Eric did his superb job on it. It was unfortunate that we ran out of 1st-Place ribbons at this meet and had to promise 3 winners that we would be mailing out their ribbons when our supply is replenished. I am happy to report the new ribbons are on order and I promise to follow up on those mailings.
At the suggestion of Jim Cronk, the lunch of "deli fried chicken", "Grandma's mustard potato salad", "Grandma's cole slaw", beverage and cookies was mostly obtained from the deli at Martin's Supermarket in the Benton Harbor area. I agree with Jim, Martin's does have great take-out food. Given the absolute silence during our meal, I'd have to guess that the rest of the members in attendance would agree with that. Jim brought the donuts and donated the pop, cookies and some water. I donated some water, Bill Bowers made the coffee and Charlene Hamp assisted in serving the lunch.
Given the monetary and food-related donations we received, we were just able to break even on the meal. After lunch, we had our Annual Meeting of the Chapter membership. The minutes of the meeting will be reported separately by the Chapter Secretary but I would like to make a comment about the level of participation by the members that were present.
There was lively discussion on most of the many agenda subjects that I thought was great. The comments offered by the attendees will be very worthwhile in terms of helping to charter the course on where this chapter should be going in the future. But, to me the most important aspect was the number of attendees that participated... it was VERY high, and I find that very encouraging. My thanks to the attendees for helping to make this meeting an interesting and productive one.
I thought the meet went very smoothly and was enjoyed by all in attendance. My sincerest appreciation goes out to Warren Wolf for letting us use the site again and to the team that helped make this meet happen... Charlene Hamp, Jim Cronk, Eric Helder and Bill Bowers... thank you all very much for your efforts.
One last item, Bill Bowers has consented to take over this event as the Meet Operations Chairman starting next year. Thanks for taking this on, Bill.
You can view individual pictures taken at the meet below. Click on any picture to bring up a larger version.
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