Hi Rough Riders,

Last week we had our Committee meeting for the first time at Dwayne Nasu’s new office.  Joann Oshima said to me, “Boy, your office is a dive compared to this place.” Sigh.  With that I knew that we were taking the reunion committee to the next level.  Dwayne’s office is bigger, with a full kitchen and a 46’ flat screen TV!  I hooked up my laptop to the TV and almost went paperless.  I spent the afternoon pulling out all the notes, agenda, email correspondences and two other school reunion websites. So I was ready to go...professional, yeah! When everyone started to show up, I had our photo album on slideshow, showing pictures of our 40th Reunion. 

We had 21 classmates for the meeting and dinner.  Pot roast ox tail and fried chicken prepared by our executive chef Wes Mukawa.

Then the meeting was called to order and I clicked on to the agenda. We covered what we needed to discuss, then I wanted to show an email correspondence.  Instead of clicking the return arrow on the top left corner,  I hit the “X” on the top right corner and it took me out of Windows and I found myself and everyone looking at my desktop...all my pre-set notes, the 2 websites, and emails were gone!  Lisa Lee Reed knew what I did (cause I didn’t) and she jumped in and covered our budget and P & L for the 40th reunion.  No try to talk and operate a computer...no work, Chinese fire drill!

We looked at James Campbell High class of 1969 and GoGovs .com websites.  We wanted to get ideas for our site to make it interesting and user friendly. Campbell High’s photo album of all their past functions was excellent and very user friendly.  The GoGovs foundation has been around for 28 years and their website really shows it. Just this past year they gave away 61 scholarships and they were involved with a number of community projects.

Roy Yonaoshi and Eric Yamagata enlightened us about filing for a 501 (C) 3 nonprofit foundation status. The conclusion...since the first 3-years the only activity will be incoming funds we will temporarily use one of two Roosevelt High Schools foundations.  This will give us time to properly establish our own foundation, if we decide to make it long-term. Thanks Roy, thanks Eric for your input.

We are still undecided on a time, location and function for 2010.  This week Harold Fujii is leading a group to check Aiea Bowl for a possible night or weekend bowling party.  (ed: we checked it tonight. Wow, was it busy) A family picnic was another possibility.  You got any ideas we’ll take them!

We talked about a 60th Birthday Bash (you guessed it) in Las Vegas and tie it in with the UH vs. UNLV football game for September 17, 2011.  I think we were all for it more because Harold was so excited he wanted to make the reservations and buy the tickets already!  Pencil it into your calendar.  Great ideas Sky Pilot!

At the conclusion of the meeting Dwayne gave everyone a 25-cent tour of his shop.  A couple of months ago he was on TV for being the first body and fender shop in Hawaii to convert to water based paint, instead of oil based paint, to be eco friendly.  Don’t worry, Dwayne will personally guarantee the paint won’t run when it rains.  Water based paint for cars has been in use for years in Europe.  Way to go green, Dwayne!

Next meeting January 9, 2010,  Happy New Year...so soon!

Aloha,

Vincent