Our September Meeting...

This past Thursday night was our first UDC meeting for the 2010-2011 year.  The meeting took place at the Bentonville Battlefield Museum in the Projector Room.  We had a very nice turn out, if I do say so myself.  It was good to see everyone and I was very excited to see how there was a renewed sense of excitement for the coming year!

For those of us that did not attend, I'll give you the summary of what took place:

We had lots of business to discuss, which took up much of our meeting.  The first thing we decided was that we would defiantly move forward with the "Unmarked Grave" project.  For those of you unfamiliar with this project, our group has been asked by the Bentonville Battlefield Historic Site to undertake marking the graves of the 19 unknown Confederate soldiers that were left behind in the Harper's care after the Union forces left the Harper House.  We hope to complete this project by the Spring and highlight this as part of our Confederate Memorial Day program.  This will be a costly undertaking, but we hope to have support from other groups and individuals.  We may also have to do a little fundraising... so be thinking of some easy yet lucrative ideas!

After some debate, it was decided by the group that we will fund the Civil War Trails Highway Fund for one more year.  We have decided that since we do not have the Gift Shop funds as we have had in the past we will have to evaluate each year if this is something we want to continue doing.  It was noted that in order for us to be considered a "support" group for the site, we will have to contribute to the site in some way each year and this satisifies that criteria.  That being said, by majority rule we will be paying for this at least one more year in addition to the unmarked grave project.

The topic of fundraising was brought up more than once.  We have some really good ideas and we welcome any new ideas.  As mentioned earlier, we do not have the Gift Shop to rely on anymore but we still have an obligation to continue to support the site, our organization and most importantly, our community.  This year will be a learning year for us as we find out how to survive with funds we have.  Again, we welcome any idea on how to raise funds in simple ways!

The new contact information sheets were passed out.  If you were not present at the meeting, you will need to get this sheet ASAP.  Please let me or Debra know-- we can either mail or email this out to you.  Questions concerning the phone tree were answered.  It was decided that if you call the person down from you on the tree and there is no answer, please leave a message and then call the person one below so the information will continue to flow and not stop.  If problems arise with the phone tree we will address them as they appear.  To activate the phone tree, please call me.

Finally we discussed the date of the Confederate Memorial Day program.  It was suggested that we move the program to be closer to the actual Memorial Day holiday.  Last year we had a very small group-- the weather was bad and we had just gotten over the Anniversary event in March--we were all burntout!  Our hope in moving the Confederate Memorial Day closer to Memorial Day we can pull in more interest from veterans and community members and be a couple months away from the big events in March.  It was decided that we would hold this program on May 21st or May 22nd, depending on site hours.

For this month's program:

I was the host this past month... I pulled out a program from a back issue of our UDC magazine that was about Confederate clothing (thanks to Debra who saved her old issues).  I briefly talked about the hardships of outfitting the Southern army and the importance of good supplies.  I retold a story about a Union soldier helping out a Confederate solider during a particularly cold winter by lending the Confederate several warm blanket... items he did not have.  This topic of clothing sparked my interest because my youngest brother-in-law recently joined the National Guard and in many of his letters home from Basic Training talked about the clothing he received from the army.  I sometimes forget how much goes into keeping an army going and it was interesting to compare and contrast the differences and similarites of yesterday's army to today's armed forces.

Finally, I have submitted our contact information sheet to the site manager.  He had requested our information so he can send us monthly newsletter's via email.  If you do not wish for him to have your email address, please let me know so I can have him remove your name from the mailing.  Those present at the meeting with email addresses were all willing to receive these emails.

Our next meeting is in October-- the 4th Thursday, time TBA and October 2nd is the next living history at the site. 

I hope you are all having a Happy Fall and I'll see you in October!