Friday, August 6, 2010

Thanks to Tom and The Crew

Having read some of my previous posts about EAA, you might be surprised to hear me sending a big thanks to Tom Poberezny. And if like so many others you believe I hate EAA you may be outright shocked. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. I merely think EAA needs someone who can bravely steer the organization forward without being shackled to the wildly out of touch board of directors. Anyway, there is a bigger story here.

During Oshkosh, we had several people ask us what we thought of Craig Fuller of AOPA. And each time this came up, we held back to see what others had to say. Little to our surprise though, every person gave the same story; Craig Fuller is isolating members from the organization and nearly impossible to reach. If you are one of the people who told us this, I apologize for interrupting you with laughter but I just couldn’t help it. Why? Because when I heard his name mentioned as a replacement for Boyer, I wrote something for NORDO News that predicted this very thing. In it I said he was a Washington insider and would act as such. And that’s what we are getting. Am I really the only person who reads resumes??? But back to my point.

Along with each person’s story about Craig Fuller’s isolation, was an equal and opposite story of Phil Boyer and Tom Poberezny being reachable. Effective or not, 'reachability' is a big plus and on the Friday before Airventure was to start, the 23rd, I emailed Tom to let him know we had some friends coming up that day and wondered if he could make sure they were taken care of. These new friends of ours were flying around the world and being from outside the U.S. I thought they could use a little help to make sure everything went smoothly for them. Meanwhile, Oshkosh was being flooded, everyone was doing their best to save the grounds, and somehow right in the middle of it all, Tom emailed back to say he would see they were taken care of. Now I don’t have to tell you I’ve been pretty hard on Tom for many years and yet within a short while he responded kindly to my email. And you know what, the folks at EAA took great care of these people and I want to thank them all for doing so.

1 comment:

Phil Boyer said...

Thanks for the compliment ... and rest assured any of us running associations should realize that members PAY OR SALARIES, and are the lifeblood of a membership organization. Sorry I haven;t made any of the SINFUL SUNDAYS, and will miss the coming one due to a 3 week trip to the West in the BONANZA - sorry, not the WACO (Lois wouldn't tolerate it).
--Phil