Commandant's June Message

Well we have completed the 2011 year.  Our new officers have been installed at the June meeting.  We have a few old officers and a few new ones taking new jobs. I do appreciate everyone who served this year. I feel that we will continue to grow.

A number of members marched in the Washington City Cotton Parade in May. At least ten members participated with the American Legion Post at SunRiver in honoring all veterans at the Veterans Park at Sunriver at 0900 hrs on May 28.  We provided six riflemen, a bugler, a drummer and other members who assisted in lowering the flags to half-mast.  Our member Tom Cover was the M.C.

Larry Mineer is working to get a detail together to march in the July 4th Day parade in St. George.  We have ten M-1's so we need ten riflemen and two more to carry the colors.  To complete the detail we need two members to carry our banner and our great drummer, Doc Terry Hansen.

But with all the above, we are in the middle of our major fund raiser, the golf tournament.  This year we are attempting to sell Tee signs to make more income.  There was an expense this year in buying the signs which we will be able to reuse for a few more years.  At this time, we have more than ten sold, but we need to sell eighteen.  We hoped to have some decent raffle gifts this year but only a few members are stepping up to help.  I realize a number of members use the excuse they don’t golf so they can’t ask people to play in the tournament.  But what excuse do you have when you don’t ask people to buy a tee sign or to donate a gift ?  Be thankful that there are a few, proud Marines who we can count on to do everything to make our events a success.  We all want to vote to give funds to groups that we support but some of us have to start to realize where the funds come from.  It was less than two years ago when we were unable to file for our charitable tax status as we didn’t have funds to pay the required filing fee. We now have some money in the bank, our charitable tax status, ten M-1 rifles and we were able to upgrade a room at the new veterans retirement home in Ivins.  Just think where we would be if everyone stood up and did their part as we all were trained to do!  Hope to see you all at the meeting on June 9.