The 2004 Germanna Reunion has come and gone. It always seems to pass by so quickly, especially when Michael Oddenino gets involved. On Saturday night, the second annual auction to benefit the Germanna Foundation was held. Michael served as auctioneer and one has no problem in believing that he missed his chosen career. Perhaps the auction ran a little longer than would be desirable, but Michael had us all laughing so hard that it stretched out. Still, it was a successful auction, as a goodly pile of change moved from the buyers' pockets to the Foundation's pockets. As Michael said, that was exactly the purpose of the auction, and he was always encouraging still higher and more competitive bids.
Eleanor and I came away from the auction with four lobsters (more correctly, with a certificate for four lobsters, which will be shipped in overnight when we are ready for them). The donor of this was Betty Prescott of Bangor, Maine, who likes to style herself as the only Beyond Germanna subscriber in the state of Maine. We needed something to go with the lobsters, so we also invested in a bottle of wine from Schwaigern.
We also invested in some of the local products of Kansas, as provided by Suzee Oberg. Before we were home, we used the gift certificate from Applebee's to have a light snack closing out the day. Suzee is a great saleswoman. She volunteered, after she had been a beta tester of the Beyond Germanna CD , to help sell it at the Reunion, and sell it she did. Some might say it was the quality of the CD, but Suzee could sell refrigerators to Eskimos. (She usually sells fashions to women.)
On Sunday the main speaker was Michael Oddenino again, but this time he was Patrick Henry. If history was presented in school in such an interesting way, we would all be historians. Michael held us spell bound, not so much with laughter this time, as with an engrossing story told by Michael becoming Patrick Henry in dress, manner, and speech.
I helped run the Seminar and thereby created an error in the program. About a week ago, I volunteered to Thom to help run the Seminar, besides being one of the speakers. As a speaker, I always like to have a maximum amount of time, so I told Thom that I would start the Seminar at 9:00 a.m.. I failed to observe that he had told registrants that it would start at 10:00 a.m.. Therefore, as my talk was concluding, the audience started arriving. By way of atonement, I have decided that I will make the talk the subject of a few Notes.
The Germanna Foundation has sponsored tours of Germanna villages (in Germany), the second one, recently ended. Many of the people on one or other of the two tours (some have gone twice) were present. Never have I heard a single negative word about the tours (except for the comment that they were too short). These are run, from this end, by Katherine and Madison Brown, but they are assisted by others here, and especially, in Germany.
(26 Jul 04)
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.