La Societe des Quarante Hommes et Huit Chevaux Grand Voiture du Texas OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF THE GRAND du TEXAS Winner of the Arthur McDowell Award 1991 – 1992 – 1993 – 1994 – 1995 – 1996 for the Best Grand Voiture Publication in the Nation without Advertising
January 2015
From the Grand Chef… I hope everyone had a nice Christmas and extend wishes for a great New Year to come. Please keep those who are dealing with hardships through the holidays in your prayers. In early December I made a trip to the Rio Grande Valley to commend Hidalgo County Voiture 1077 for an unprecedented donation of $10,000 to a dozen nursing students at the University of Texas Pan American as part of their Nurses Training program and to address membership issues as the locale voted to surrender their charter. As we are all very well aware – membership is a difficult challenge to overcome. There are letters from various Directeurs from Voiture Nationale added to this edition. They have suggestions that have proved successful in other Voitures so keep an open mind as they may contain some information you can use at your locale. Working programs is crucial if you want to be successful. You do not have to work all the programs – very few locales do work all of them, but find a few you can support and that is a very good place to start. The other important part of working programs is to report your activities! Report your events not only to Grand, but to the local media or through the TVN. I welcome anyone to write about their locale events and submit it for publication. There has been some discussion about a Grand Recruiting Team who would travel to different areas and help the locales host a special event so you can draw in more new members.
Without new members we cannot survive.
Everyone should be working to recruit new members, but again this is not always an easy task – it takes work and many of our folks have worked hard for many years. We have to work hard to pass our legacy on to the next generation. We must - or nearly 100 years of accomplishments will be forgotten. I believe we have worked too hard to let it all go away! We should not only do it for the future generations, but for our departed who dedicated their lives to La Societe. David Knutson Grand Chef de Gare
UPCOMING SPRING CHEMINOT FEBRUARY 6-8, 2015 Have you registered, made your hotel reservation or sent in your ad!!! We hope to see a good showing for the Spring Cheminot. Guest Speaker will be American Legion Department Commander Lynn Sparks – who is also a member of Harris County Voiture Locale 163 (Houston). Camp Mabry is opening the museum an hour early so we may have our memorial service on Sunday morning. If you have not made arrangements then make sure you do before the end of the month. Information enclosed. I have invited workers from the boxcar move to dinner with us so we may recognize them along with other VIPs who made significant contributions to the project and helped make it happen. Without their help we would have expended significantly more money that we did so please look for them at the banquet on February 7th.
VISIT THE GRANDE DU TEXAS WEBSITE AT WWW.TEXASBOXCAR.ORG
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