AHOY Shipmates!
Welcome to the Glacier newsletter. I hope everyone had a
great time this summer and that you are enjoying the
beautiful fall weather we are experiencing. But now I want
you to focus your sites on reunion 2011 Branson, MO. that is
only eleven months away. Our dates are September 14-18,
which are pretty much the same as in past years. The weather
in Branson that time of year should be perfect. You do not
want to miss this one for it will be our 10th
reunion of the USS Glacier AGB-4 since it’s beginning in
1993 at Norfolk VA.
Wendy and I made a trip to Branson, MO this summer to do our
site visit to a number of hotels. After a long and hard
decision we have chosen the Lodge of the Ozarks for our
stay. I am sure you are going to like this hotel’s location,
walking distance to numerous dining spots, entertainment
shows, and many shops of all kinds. Also, the hotel has
recently completed renovations totaling nearly six million
dollars. The rooms are very nice and our price is under one
hundred dollars a night, $95.00 a night plus tax. I want to
thank Keith Otzen also for scouting out this hotel on a
previous business trip to Branson, MO. Additional
information will be available in our Spring 2011 newsletter.
For those of you who want to book early I will leave the
hotel number at the end of this letter, but please do not
call until after the New Year. Be sure to mention the USS
Glacier Association for the special rate.
Since I have taken over as President of the Glacier
Association this has been the best year so far for our
members paying their dues. I want to thank all of you for
your continuing support of our organization, you are the
backbone that keeps us going and I mean that with all my
heart. I hope the new dues form was partly responsible for
the great feedback I received. We will continue to use them
in the future. Also to those who made donations above and
beyond their normal dues, thank you very much! For those of
you who have forgotten to pay your dues there is still time
to get them in so I can mail you your new membership card.
As in the past we will be doing our raffle tickets during
the reunion, if you have something you would like to donate
please keep that in mind for the reunion next year. The
raffle has always helped us out to bring in a little extra
money for the association. Again we will be having our
drawing at the Saturday night banquet, I am still working on
what we will have for a grand prize but it will be something
nice for sure.
We still have a lot of shipmates who are not receiving this
newsletter or any of our mailings due to incorrect
addresses. I am asking your help if you know of anyone who
is not. It has been very difficult trying to track down
these people not to mention all of the extra cost in postage
and time spent on the phone. We have called shipmates and
have either talked to them personally, left a message on
their answering machine or found out we had no valid phone
number. The conversations served many positive purposes, (1)
we found out if they had received our last newsletter, (2)
we found out if they have e-mail so we could cut down on our
printing and postage, (3) we verified their address and (4)
unfortunately those shipmates that have taken that final
cruise. We will continue calling especially those shipmates
who have never attended a reunion and have no e-mail.
NOTE:
Are you looking for your DD 214 or other service records?
If you have lost your DD 214 and would like to retrieve
a certified copy, or other important service record page you
might be missing, this web sight will get the forms back to
you much quicker than the 4-6 weeks it has routinely taken
you in the past.
www.archives.gov/veterans/evetrecs/index.html
FLIGHTS TO BRANSON WITH GOOD RATES:
Frontier, Air Tran (soon to be Southwest) Branson Air
Express (charter)
www.flybranson.com
www.flyspringfield.com
If you have any old memorabilia that you would like to
donate to the association please bring it to the reunion or
send it to Woody Benner our vice president/historian. Woody
can be reached at 610 -797-854. In the past I have been
asked why we haven’t used our e-mail to notify our members
of reunions and other messages. The main reason was our list
was so small and would only target a few members. Over the
last few years I have been updating addresses and also
adding new ones. I feel now that we have a pretty good
database and we will be doing a test message in the near
future to see how it goes.
I am counting on a real good turn out at our next reunion in
Branson, MO. It is a fun place for all and I know you will
have a wonderful time there, so try not to miss this one.
Happy sailing!
Lodge of the Ozarks
Toll free 877-327-9894
Respectfully,
Gordon Wagoner
President
USS Glacier Association
“Follow Me”
To
Branson, MO.
