In this Issue... From the President Page 1 Are you Checking MTL? Page 2 Meet a Vet Page 3 U.S. VETS Support Page 4 Thirsty Troop Thursday Membership Update VA ID Cards are Back Cleaning up the Streets of Trilogy Vets Presence at Happy Hour Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Who am I? Page 9 Luke AFB Volunteer Update Brick Display to get Makeover Page 11 Page 11 Volume 2 Issue 1 From the President Scott Duke Tvc.pres@zona.net W e are off and running here in 2018! Thanks to your support, we have five (5) new missions for the club; U.S. Vets, MANA House, Veterans Outreach Center, Vietnam Memorial Trail, Kiva Club Flag and Brick Display. I m also honored to announce we now have mission leaders for ALL missions. Let me introduce the latest mission leaders; for MANA House, Ron Gabaldon has volunteered his leadership skills, for the Kiva Club Flag & and Brick Display, it is Bill Hohman, and for the U.S. VETS its Richard Brown. These are impressive individuals with big hearts and willingness to help. I also wanted to thank you for approving my nominations for members-at-large; Richard Brown, Joe Ingalls, and Bruce Murray. They will attend their first board meeting later this month and I am expecting good things from February 2018 them as they help lead our club in 2018. The by-laws are now the governing document for the club and I sure did appreciate, not only your vote, but also the many inputs I received that allowed the document to gain approval. The by-laws are uploaded on our website for review at anytime. We completed our first, new mission of the (Continued on page 2) Agenda Page 13 Dates for monthly meetings (Meetings start at 4:00 pm) is a monthly newsletter for the members of the Trilogy Veteran s Club. If you have an article that you would like published, please send to Scott Duke at tvc.pres@zona.net January 30, 2018 June 26, 2018 February 27, 2018 July 31, 2018 March 27, 2018 August 28, 2018 April 24, 2018 September 25, 2018 May 29, 2018 October 30, 2018
Page 2 (Continued from page 1) 2018 as members from the club and volunteers from Luke AFB headed down to Phoenix to support U. S. VETS. The mission was two-fold and you can read all about it on page 4. Thanks to club members Paul Bernard and Richard Brown for taking on this Saturday morning mission. They even let me tag along! In motion is our second new mission of 2018, the Veterans Outreach Center (VOC), Chris Salzer (mission leader) has done a tremendous job in recruiting support and even mastering the Sign-up Genius program! As of this issue, we have all food items covered and are ready to head down to the VOC on March 2nd to serve the military veterans inneed. My thanks to all of those that signed-up to bring food items or serve, or drive. Because of YOU, our club is making a difference in the lives of military veterans in-need. Plans are well underway for the first-ever Military Services Bocce Tournament, set for 10:00 am on April 20th. Team captains with meet at my house on March 15th at 10:00 am to discuss the rules and pick for bracket seeds. Thanks to the help of club member, Marv Shadman, I had lunch with him and Peoria City Council Woman, Bridget Binsbacher earlier this month. After our conversation during last month s club meeting about the Vietnam Memorial Trail, I wanted to get an update on the trail (will brief this during our club meeting this month), explain our plan to keep the trail clean, and see what else we could do to help the council women. This was a productive meeting, and thanks to Marv s expert communicative skills, it looks like we might have our first, holesponsor for the Veterans Club Charity Golf Tournament in November. We also talked about teaming up with other Veterans Clubs in the area to see about joining missions. I explained we have a relationship with both Corte Bella and Vistancia Veterans clubs. She mentioned two different clubs she wants me to meet with. We had another successful social event at V s Taproom. Thirsty Troop Thursday was a big hit with about 22 club members showing up to have a beer, eat some pizza, and share stories. I am very proud of this event and it is paying off as club members are getting to know club members, outside of club meetings! See page 5 for more details. Finally, don t forget to use this e-mail address when contacting me concerning club business - tvc.pres@zona.net See you at the club meeting on the 27th! Are you Checking the MTL I f you looked at the headline and wondered, What the heck is a M-T-L, then this article is for you! MTL stands for My Trilogy Life and is Trilogy s way for dispersing information to the community. There is a club section and we have created a posting area for the Veterans Club. Almost every morning, the club president adds, deletes, or updates posts that are relevant to Veterans in our club. As of this issue, there are a dozen or so postings. Please make it part of your routine to check the MTL and see what is happening in real-time at the Veterans Club.
Page 3 B ob served four years in the United States Army Security Agency. After one year of training in the U.S. and receiving a Top Secret Crypto Special Intelligence security clearance, he served for one year in the Middle East and two years in the Far East. After completing his military service in 1969, he completed college where he received Associate of Applied Science and Bachelor of Electrical Engineer degrees, graduating with high honors. In 1972 he married Muriel Labadie and joined Gerber Scientific where he served as a Senior Software Engineer and later as Manager of Systems Development. In 1979 he joined General Electric where he became a Senior Member of the Corporate Staff, representing GE on national standards committees and serving as a Senior Corporate Consultant to GE s operating divisions. In 1981, Bob cofounded his first high tech startup company, Engineering Automated Systems. Bob was the initial sole incorporator and served as the Vice President of Engineering. EAS developed the first color UNIX based workstations and printed circuit board CAD systems. EAS ultimately failed, but Bob refused to surrender, and became a serial entrepreneur, starting or serving as a member of the founding team six high-tech companies between 1981 and 2007, all with varying degrees of success. In between startups he served as a management consultant to investment bankers, venture capitalists, and large corporations. In 1990, he moved his young family from the East Coast to San Diego, where he and Muriel raised their three daughters. A highlight of Bob s career came in 2001 when he was personally presented with an award for Retail Product of the Year by Bill Gates. In 2007, Bob retired and he and Muriel purchased a new home in Trilogy at Vistancia, where they live today. Bob is a member of six Trilogy clubs, was elected by the community to serve on the Kiva Club Enhancement Committee, and today serves on both the Trilogy Liaison Committee and the Trilogy Capital Improvement Committee. Since arriving at Trilogy, he also wrote and published of a science fiction trilogy, The Galaxy Keeper, which is available on Amazon. He has been active in the Trilogy Veterans Club since it was founded. He wrote the club s initial by-laws, was the club s first membership chair, organized the club s first furniture drive, and volunteered numerous times at the VFC, Arizona Stand Down, Soldiers Best Friend and the Madison Street Outreach Center. He was instrumental in working with Shea to build the flag pole in front of the Kiva Club and allowing the Veteran s Club to take charge of it. In 2016 he brought the annual Toys for Tots campaign into the veterans Club as an annual mission. He has been involved with veteran s support groups for five years. He is currently on the Board of Directors of the Veterans Furniture Center, is an active member of Unified Arizona Veterans, and represents the Furniture Center at the Southwest Veterans Chamber of Commerce. Bob and Muriel enjoy the Trilogy lifestyle. They also travel extensively and are looking forward to planned trips to Palm Springs, Miami Beach, Turks and Caicos, San Diego, New England and upper state New York, northern California, and China and Tibet, during 2018.
Page 4 U.S. VETS Support I t was a brisk Saturday morning as six Airmen from Luke AFB and three members of the Veterans Club headed to two separate locations in support of our new mission, U.S. VETS. Three of the Airmen (Brady Towner, Jacob Raisanen, and Jermaine Hellenbrand) went to a storage locker to pick up personal belongs of a veteran that was leaving transitional housing at U.S. VETS to his own apartment in Phoenix. It was wonderful to see an at-risk veteran taking care of business and helping himself with the transition. The other three Airmen (Myriah Blaziak and her husband, Mike Powers, and Richard August, along with club members, Richard Brown, Paul Bernard, and club president, went to U.S. VETS headquarters building in downtown Phoenix to help prepare rooms for their big National Site Visit of senior leadership. There were tables and chairs to move from one floor to another, communications equipment to move, and cleaning and arranging a conference room for the leadership conference. This conference was important because he directly affects the lives of military veterans in transitional housing. Decisions, directions, and guidance from this conference will serve to further support at-risk military veterans and it was a good mission for the club to be involved in. Many thanks to the Luke volunteers for taking time away from their duties to help our military veterans in this double mission for the club.
Page 5 Thirsty Troop Thursday to enjoy some free Pizza with our beer! I t was another good-sized crowd of veterans that showed up at V s Taproom earlier this month to support the Club s Thirsty Troop Thursday, or as we call it, Triple T! This month, thanks to the generosity of a few club members, we even got Thanks to our secretary, Mark Grindle, we now have the patio area reserved each month, and they are working on offering some specials for the club members. Here are some sights of the big event
Page 6 Membership Update Mark Grindle jetsetter05@msn.com T his month has been very busy for recruiting and retaining new members for our club. Your Board of Directors have set-up a rotating schedule among ourselves to attend the Tuesday night social at the Kiva and Mita clubs to promote our club, missions and activities. Also, we are attending Friday's Coffee Talk at the Kiva club to get out our word. Last Thursdays social at V's Tap Room was very successful and several potential members showed up. If you have not paid your 2018 dues, please do so. Membership forms can be obtained through our website, tvaveteeransclub.weebly.com, or at our club's meetings. Your dues go to support the various missions the club supports. We have increased the number of missions the TVC participates, and the opportunities to support the veterans around Phoenix. Please go our to our website to view the calendar and the missions that are upcoming. As our President indicated at our last meeting, the only requirements to be a TVC member are being a veterans, living in Trilogy and paying your dues. We encourage participation in our various missions and activities, but it is not a requirement to be a member. We are striving to obtain a good balance between service and social. We welcome you and appreciate your support. Editor s note: I just wanted to take a few spaces of text here and thank Mark for the amazing work he has done on behalf of the club. Not only does he take care of all the secretarial work of the club, but keeps our werbsite current and relevant, and is the manager of the club s gift shop (Hats, bricks, coins, and shirts). What makes this even more amazing is the fact that he is NOT like many of us...retired! He has a full-time job, but manages to make every meeting (pre and post club meetings) and is a great source of information. My thanks to Mark for his efforts in making our club a success!
Page 7 Veterans ID Cards are Back V eterans are once again able to apply for the free Department of Veterans Affairs ID card after technical problems late last year forced a delay to the program. The free ID card, originally rolled-out in late November, was ordered by Congress in 2015 as a way to give veterans proof of service at businesses without carrying a copy of their DD-214 forms. It is available for all honorably discharged veterans, regardless of era or time in service. But the application appeared to face major technical problems immediately after opening, and tests by at least two Military.com reporters accessing the site with their own VA logins and military service credentials encountered repeated errors. The VA in early December suspended new applications, and posted a message asking veterans to submit their email address to receive updates. "Thank you for your interest in the Veteran Identification Card! Currently, we are experiencing a high volume of traffic. We apologize, and want you to know we're working to fix the problem," the notice said. "In the meantime, please enter your email address and we'll send an update when the Veteran Identification Card application is back online." Several weeks later, veterans who were logged-in to the VA's system before visiting the ID card application page were able to apply for the card, while others were still prompted for an email address. Editor s Note: Reprinted from a 29 January article by Amy Bushatz of military.com. W e are so excited about our guest speakers for the month of February. Jay Montoya, a dog handler, and a furry friend from the organization will be attending our meeting and providing a presentation on Soldier s Best Friend. For the first-time, we are opening the club up to spouses to attend this briefing. It is that special! We will start the February meeting with Soldier s Best Friend, which allows them the opportunity to leave and not stay for the whole meeting. Spouses will also depart at this time. We are expecting a larger than normal crowd, as this is a very popular mission for the club. We are also surprising the organization by presenting Soldier s Best Friend with a charitable donation of $1K. Make plans to attend this special event!
Page 8 Cleaning up the Streets of Trilogy Bruce Murray (mission leader) mtxtopaz@gmail.com A s the mission leader for the Adopt-A- Street, I wanted to give you an update on the mission and some of the changes we have initiated over the past month. First, the missions are now once a month on the last Saturday (8:00 am) of each month. We have a sign-up roster on the website, but you can always send me an e-mail (address is in my title box) and let me know you plan to help. The second thing we did was invite our Luke AFB volunteers to come out and help. I work closely with Richard Brown, who coordinates the volunteers from Luke. Because we are using the Airmen, we were able to expand our clean-up area around Trilogy. We now start at the corner gas station on Vistancia Blvd and on team goes North to the main gate (both sides of the blvd). We also send our second team down El Mirage road all the way to the turn on Jomax (both sides). Our obligation to the city is just to do El Mirage, but with the extra help, why not expand our area. The third and final thing is breakfast for the volunteers. Once clean-up is completed, we head to a club members house for breakfast. Last month, my wife Shirley prepared the breakfast and let me tell you, I-Hop or Denny s had nothing on the spread she put out for the volunteers. Next month, Nancy Duke will be cooking breakfast for the volunteers. Remember, we ONLY do the breakfasts IF we have Airmen from Luke AFB helping to clean-up. We are also working with Councilwoman Bridget Binsbacher and the kids at the local Vistancia school. We are going to team up with the school kids and they will help with the clean-up as well. The idea is that the school kid will be walking with a military veteran and an activeduty member of the Air Force, sharing stories about military life and mentoring the youth. This is as win/win all the way around! Finally, I wanted to show you just how much trash we did pick up last month (and those that picked it up), which explains why this mission is important to our community. As our club president often says, service is also about service to our community, and that is why this mission works for our club!
Page 9 Veterans Table at Happy Hour e will continue to have W a presence at both the Kiva and Mita Club during Happy Hours. Members of the Board of Directors and our Mission Leaders have volunteered to staff a table, twice a month to bring awareness of the Veterans Club and attract new membership. This started in earnest last month and so far, we have had 10 new members sign-up, directly because of being at Happy Hour and seeing the table. Pictured: John Polli holding down the table at the Mita Club. ot your annual dues paid for 2018? According to our spreadsheet, we have over G 20 club members who have not paid their $10 yet. In order to do the work we do, as a club, every dollar counts, so if you need to square your bill away, please see Mark Grindle or Les Kessler. Do you know who I am? I am a member of the Trilogy Veterans Club and served in the United States Air Force. (We know it is hard to see his face, but the editor likes airplanes!) Answer can be found on page 13
Page 10 PRESIDENT Scott Duke tvc.pres@zona.net VICE-PRESIDENT Bob Meizinger boval51101@gmail.com SECRETARY Mark Grindle jetsetter05@msn.com TREASURER Les Kessler kesslerleslie@yahoo.com Member-at-Large Richard Brown rbrowntrilogy@cox.net Member-at-Large Bruce Murray mtxtopaz@gmail.com Member-at-Large Joe Ingalls jingalls15@cox.net
Page 11 L ast month, we approved a new mission called, Kiva Brick Display to Club Flag & Brick Display. I then announced Bill Hohman as the new mission leader. get Makeover Bill has put together a pretty talented team to take on this mission, which includes Bob Prow and Paul Bernard. A fact sheet about this mission has been prepared and is located on the club s website (tvaveteransclub.weebly.com). I had the chance to meet with this team at the Kiva Club Flagpole earlier this month and with Bill s background in masonry, he noticed quite a bit of sloping going down the sides and some uneven bricks. We decided it was time for a makeover. One thing we noticed was that the header that depicts what the bricks are for, is not centered on the display, but rather off in the upper right corner. We need to fix that, and have already ordered new bricks to rectify the issue. All of these plans were presented to Gregg Snyder (Lifestyle Director for Trilogy) and some of his staff on the 9th of this month and he was in favor of the changes were proposed. Once we start this project later this year or early next year, Bill is going to need a bit more labor help, so be looking for a call for help, when that happens. We are very excited about this team s knowledge, skills, and abilities to make this a world-class memorial for our family and friends who have bricks placed on the display. We will also be in-charge of lowering the flag to half-staff, when appropriate, to include club members. Luke Vol Update Richard Brown rbrowntrilogy@cox.net A irmen from Luke AFB continue to support our club. In fact, they are quite heavily involved and you ll be seeing these Airmen in uniform doing the Adopt-a-Street, Foodfor-Kidz and the Veterans Outreach Center (VOC) home-cooked lunch serving. I continue to serve the Club as the Luke AFB volunteer coordinator, a position I ve held since January, 2015, and since 1 January of this year, 7 Luke volunteers have supported or will be supporting the Adopt-a-Street mission, 6 have supported the U.S. Vets (see separate article on Page 4). As you will read, this support included moving furniture into the apart- ment of a once homeless veteran. Additionally, 4 Airmen are scheduled to help with the serving of home-cooked meals to homeless veterans at the VOC, the first occurring on 2 March, and 7 airmen will be helping us on 6 March for Food-for-Kidz packing day. That s a total of 20 Luke volunteers thus far in 2018 and as of this writing, it is only February! Finally, just FYI, since August, 2015, Luke Airmen have given us 1,081 man-days of support. Editor s Note: Our club is incredibly thankful to have these Airmen volunteer to help with our club missions, but also having the caliber of person like Richard Brown that treats these Airmen like family and ensures they are given every opportunity to take part in serving those veterans less fortunate than themselves.
Page 12 rilogy Veterans Club (TVC) shirts, hats, bricks, and coins are for T sale. Prices are below. Please fill out the form (website) and send or hand to Mark Grindle (Secretary) during our monthly meeting. Polo Shirt Tee Shirt Customized Brick Club Coin
Page 13 H ere is a look at the agenda for this month s meeting of the Veterans Club. We hope to see you there! Meeting comes to order at 1600 Pledge of Allegiance Membership Update Guest speaker: Soldier s Best Friend Board of Director s comments Old business New business Good of the Club Adjourn If you thought it was Marv Shadman, you would be correct!