President's Message for March/April 2026 I hope you all have started the new year well. Despite the good weather in January, we did not get out of our household much due to bad colds and other ailments making the rounds within. Hopefully you did not encounter much of that, but if you did, I hope you are doing better in February. Thankfully, I was just fine for our first meeting in 2026 on February 7, and it was such an experience to remember. In addition to a great lunch and the usual festivities such as Al Ludlow's infamous quiz and our raffle, the presentation on the ditching of P-3 Orion sub-hunter Alfa Foxtrot 586 in 1978, near the Bering Strait, was so powerful since both a survivor from that ditching and the wife of one of the pilots that day who sadly did not make it, each presented their perspectives on that tragic saga during the Cold War. It's hard to imagine someone being in a life raft watching that aircraft go down in 90 seconds and then hearing directly from that survivor, as well as from the widow of someone on that P-3 who sadly did not come home. We thank Matt and Loreen for sharing these stories. The full write-up and summary of the meeting is elsewhere in this issue. As a final, and friendly, reminder, SAH membership renewals are now past-due for 2026. As always, you can renew on our website via PayPal (you even can use just a credit card if you don't have a PayPal account) or by just sending us a check for $50. We very much appreciate you doing so! Our next SAH membership lunch will be on April 4, on the life and combat of American World War One Ace, Frank Luke. Luke had 19 kills - second only to Eddie Rickenbacker. As always, details are in this newsletter, I will also be sending out emails with additional information and of course the particulars will be posted to our website. We hope to see you there!
And our past-president and Program Director, Nick Veronico, has been very busy linking up interesting speakers for our subsequent SAH meetings in 2026 as well.
We can always use new members, so please continue to tell your friends and colleagues about SAH. In fact, we respectfully ask every current SAH member to set a goal in 2026 to get at least one friend to join. We would really appreciate it! As always, one of the easiest ways for people to learn more about us is through our website. Also remember that you can sign up potential members as guests for any of our lunch membership meetings. Thank you as always for your ongoing support of, and participation in, the Society for Aviation History. We are thankful for it! Kind regards, Byron May
Past President Messages can be found on the new page below: |
