The committee formally met for the
first time on March 12 to discuss Reunion 3 to be held at the Sheraton
Sand Key Resort in Clearwater from Thursday, October 23 until Sunday,
October 26, 2008. A block of rooms have been set aside and will
be held until approximately September 22, 2008 at the rate of $169 per
night for the reunion. This is just $10 more than we paid in
2006. After September 22, the rates increase to over $200 per
night. The lesson here is to make your reservations early! Dues for the 2008 reunion are $35
(members only - no dues for guests). These dues cover the expense
of the hospitality suites, mailing, and office supplies. Your
committee would appreciate early payment of the dues as it helps us
deal with the front end costs. Early payment also gives us
a better idea of the number of people we can count on to attend the
reunion. As before, please make your checks to, Russell Buyse,
and mail them to: 13300 Indian Rocks Road Unit 1101 Largo, FL 33774 The agenda for Reunion 3 will be
similar to our last reunion. The agenda, as it stands now, goes like
this: Thursday - The hospitality suite(s)
will open at 4 PM. This year we will again have two adjoining
suites overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. Alcoholic
drink tickets will be available at the registration desk for
purchase. Water and soft drinks will be complimentary. The
registration desk will also open at 4 PM on Thursday and will be
located in the hospitality suite(s). The desk will be open just
about the entire time the hospitality suite is open. Friday - This will be our golf day
probably starting late morning or early afternoon. We will try to
make arrangements at the Clearwater Country Club like last year.
Instead of a Sunset Dinner cruise we will have a cookout at Ray
Hoopes' house Friday evening. This was very gracious of Ray
to open his house to us. The cookout at Ray's house will result
in a larger attendance at a much reduced cost. Ray estimates the
cost for the cookout will be between ten and fifteen dollars per person
(this compares very favorably to the $50 the hotel would have charged
for less). Beer and soft drinks will be provided, but if someone
wants something else to drink, they should bring it (hard liquor,
wine). Since the cookout will be at Ray's house, as many people
that can car pool, the better. For example, we will coordinate
trips from the hotel. The cookout will last between 6 PM and 10
PM, but people can come and go as they want. The hospitality
suite will be closed from 5 PM Friday evening until 9 AM Saturday
morning. Saturday - The business meeting will
be held at 10 AM at the Sheraton. Complimentary coffee and danish
will be available for members and their guests in the hospitality
suite(s) prior to and during the meeting. Guests are invited to
attend the business meeting if they wish. We haven't created an
agenda for the meeting as yet, but future reunion plans will be
discussed and we will try to get a speaker from Honeywell. If
there is something you would like on the agenda, please let us know by
emailing us at rbuyse@aol.com. The banquet will start around 6 PM with
a hosted cocktail hour. The hosted cocktail hour is a significant
benefit given to us by the hotel as drink prices at the hotel are
fairly expensive. The complimentary cocktail hour will be
followed by dinner around 7 PM. The banquet will be a sit down
dinner with your choice of Prime Rib, catch of the day, Chicken, or
Vegetarian. Dress for the banquet will be moderately
dressy. Instead of a speaker, we will attempt to get a local
entertainment group to play/sing for us. We will also have an
open mike so that people can tell stories about themselves or
others. We will coordinate some of this prior to the
banquet. The hospitality suite will be closed from 5 PM until
after the banquet. Sunday - The Hospitality Suite(s)
will reopen at 9 AM for complimentary bloody marys and farewells.
The suite will close at noon. This will conclude the reunion. We hope all our out of town Spooks
will stay at the Sheraton. Part of our contract with the hotel is
to guarantee a certain number of room nights. As we have no
backer (it is just us folks), any shortfall will have to be paid by the
funds left over from the reunion, which in the past has not been
much. We also hope that some of the locals will stay at the hotel
to be close to the fun and games. Registration for the hotel should be
done directly to the hotel. Please reference the "Honeywell Spook
Reunion" when making your reservations to get the discounted
rate. The hotel's numbers are 800-456-7263 or 727-595-1611.
We would like to remind everyone
again to take a look at our new website (www.honeywellspooks.com) and see
what we have on the site. Mick Leffler is the webmaster and he
still wants to hear from you regarding ideas to make the site more
informative and useable to our members. His email address is
mickleffler@sbcglobal.net. To access the site follow these simple
instructions: Scroll all the way to the bottom of the
'spook' page. It'll be totally black down there. Next, go to the
bottom left of the page where Mick has hidden a hot spot. Your cursor
will become a hand. Click on that hot spot to enter the
site. As noted before, we are Spooks, so there has to be a little
intrigue into getting access to the site! Roadrunners Internationale has a
very informative website. Below are some links to some of the sites
more significant highlights. Take a look, you will enjoy the read. Cold War Stories - http://roadrunnersinternationale.com/
Location of the current A-12s on
Display: http://roadrunnersinternationale.com/articlestoday.html Details of the next Roadrunners
reunion in 2009 in Las Vegas:
http://roadrunnersinternationale.com/member_activities.html Difference between the A-12 and
SR-71: http://roadrunnersinternationale.com/a-12s.html We need to ask again for
your helpin helping us to locate some of our members. We
have been working on our database and our list of missing in action has
grown larger. We suspect many have moved or changed their email
address and just didn't inform us about the change. If you have
current information on these lost Spooks please send an email of their
new address, or get in contact with the person and have them get in
contact with the committee at rbuyse@aol.com. The members we need
help locating, in alphabetical order are: Ken Abplanalp, Paul Carnahan, Mike
Cook, Eric Faraldo, Hap Flater, Floyd Johnson, Ron Mason, Chuck McLeod,
John Montgomery, Frank Quirino, Al Tapper, and Cass Vega. Please
help, we don't want anyone to miss out on the reunion.
Hope everyone is making their plans
to join us in October. We guarantee a great time. Your committee: Joe Brigham,
Russ Buyse, Bob Chellberg, Dan Engleken, Marty Franklin, Ray Hoopes,
Jim Janowski, Ken Leiser, Jerry Samberg, and Andy Springer.
See a broken link or error - Have a story or photo to add - - please let the webmaster know by E-mail
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