Greetings everyone in the Western Area. I just finished up my first week as your new WMHA President and FMCA National Vice President so I thought I would write a message just to stay in touch. I did have a couple of official acts to do: one was to vote to approve a couple of contract items which were for the provider of FMCA’s preferred mail forwarding service and for FMCA’s Mobil App provider, Togo RV. The other was to stay in contact with FMCA’s graphics person who does our art work for our rally program as well as the registration form, etc. Just wait until you see it, we have received lots of compliments on it.
Well, I’m writing this on Labor Day so I thought I would kick back and think about what this holiday is all about. A lot of people think of this 3-day weekend as summer’s last hurrah to go and get sun burned, injured, drunk or overeat. That is too bad as most people get together with family and friends to celebrate this holiday honoring the American worker. The holiday was created by the labor movement in the late 19th century. During the height of the Industrial Revolution in the US the average American worker worked 12 hours days, 7 days a week just to make a basic living. Children as young as 5 or 6 toiled in mills, factories and mines across the country. Workers often faced extremely unsafe working conditions with insufficient access to fresh air, sanitary facilities and breaks. Over the years this led to labor unions, demonstrations, strikes, riots and boycotts. In the wake of this massive unrest, Congress passed an act making Labor Day a legal holiday. On June 28, 1894, President Grover Cleveland signed it into law.
Since this is September, normally in a few weeks the WMHA Governing Board would be meeting in Hanford for our annual meeting and Indio planning session. I was really looking forward to this as it would be my first meeting as your new President and getting to socialize with all the board members and the sharing of ideas. This meeting won’t happen for a year now but don’t let the thought processes stop. We are always looking for ways to improve the way we do business and ways to make our annual rally in Indio better. If you think of something (anything) jot it down before you forget (we are not forgetful at our age, are we?) and call or e-mail it in. We have a year to make our next area rally bigger and better than ever.
I am very happy to see chapters are doing rallies during these troubling times. Through newsletters, phone conversations and e-mails I have seen where chapters have accepted the challenge and put in place work-arounds so they can have their chapter get togethers. This is great news.
That’s about it. I plan to do a message like this on occasion (between newsletters) to stay in touch. Let me know what you think. I’ll enjoy hearing from you either by phone or e-mail and hopefully in the not too distant future we will see each other in person. Until then, safe travels.
Bob Golk
WMHA President
FMCA National Vice President
