On Friday morning, I Zoomed into my own chapter meeting, and then logged in to the Texas Virtual Conference, Regent Susan Tillman, at 1:00 CST which is 2:00 EST. It was nice to see the Texas Board and several Pages in a familiar setting, wearing masks, spaced apart at upper and lower tables. The officers gave their reports from their individual seats. That evening at 7 CST 8 EST Texas Daughter Ruth Robinson, Society of the Honor Guard, Tomb of the Unknown Soldier presented an enlightening history of the Tomb and the selection process for the unknowns. Most of the Texas Daughters’ greetings and introductions, if not all, had been prerecorded by the chairs and honoraries, but it was difficult to tell. The audio-visual team did a truly professional job. The winners’ acceptance speeches were also recorded and certificates will be presented later by the nominating chapters.
On Saturday, at 9:30 am I was at the Texas Conference, to bring greetings during the business session. After a brief break to grab a sandwich, I logged on at 1:00 to bring greetings to our North Carolina Society C.A.R. and hear their interesting speaker Dr. John Sexton speak about his C.A.R.E. program. State President Spencer Daniels chose this program as her project and was able to award Dr. Sexton with more than $2,000. (Just a side note: John is Battle of Elizabethtown Ethelene Barnes’ cousin!) He was an interesting speaker and had an informative video of a set of parents speaking about their deaf baby and how C.A.R.E. had helped them.
From there I joined the Deep River Chapter’s virtual meeting, Barbara Guest Regent, to watch a moving Vietnam Memorial introduction by Chapter Chaplain Jane Hogan followed by family members presenting certificates and pins to their Vietnam veterans. After a couple of hours working on emails, I hurriedly dressed to return for the closing session of the Texas Conference. It was National Defense night and the keynote speaker was engineer, US Air Force officer, and NASA astronaut Jerry Ross, who completed seven Space Shuttle missions! He gave a very intriguing talk about his personal life and his life in outer space with great photos in outer space of his space walks. What an outstanding conference.
On Sunday, at 2 PM, I logged on to the Mecklenburg Chapter’s virtual workshop “Developing a Story from Your Family Records.” Regent Ann Del Vecchio arranged for sisters Lucinda Lawrence and Jann Pollard to share their experiences writing their family histories. Jann submitted a lovely watercolor for our American Heritage 2020 contest to tell her patriot’s story. There was a lot of information shared followed by lots of questions answered. Many thanks to them for inspiring all of us in attendance.
The silver lining coming from this pandemic is that we can be in multiple places in a short amount of time! There is no possible way I could have been in Wilmington, Texas, somewhere in the Piedmont, Pittsboro, Texas again and finally in Charlotte in that amount of time. I have enjoyed being able to be in faraway places in one day!
Carole Weiss, State Regent
