By Charlie Schrenkel, L140050
June 2013
It is 1:30 in the morning. Earlier, we stopped for the night in a campground just off the interstate. A rainstorm has come up; probably the reason I woke up. As I lie here, I listen to the raindrops landing upon the roof of our motorhome. They are, for the most part, steady, that is until a breeze moves through the branches of the trees overhead. Then they seem to dance across the roof in waves; to and fro, no particular direction. The sound of the droplets hitting the roof makes me wonder: did the raindrops gather on the leaves and branches above waiting for the wind to move them closer together so they could join hands and merrily drop and dance across my roof? Ridiculous, I say to myself.
But aren’t we like these tiny raindrops? Don’t we wait until motivated by something to join each other and make our way to pleasant areas where we meet and greet one another and enjoy the friendships that we have forged through our membership in Family Motor Coach Association?
And so it is with Jean and me. By the time this column reaches you, we will be on the road — traveling to Family Motor Coach Association’s 50th anniversary celebration in Gillette, Wyoming. A huge, fun-filled, and exciting birthday celebration has been planned for Gillette to commemorate the beginnings of Family Motor Coach Association on a Maine hilltop long ago. Activities will include a pancake breakfast that will be served to all attendees by the national officers; a golf outing; an ice cream social; morning coffee and doughnuts; seminars; and exciting local day trips to such outstanding locations as Devils Tower and Deadwood, South Dakota. And certainly within driving distance is the site of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, where General George Armstrong Custer met the Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne Indians.
This gathering in Gillette also will host your Governing Board meeting, where decisions and changes to FMCA’s Bylaws and policies and procedures — approved by the Executive Board during the many meetings in the past year — are granted final approval from the national directors.
Our biannual national elections also will be held during this meeting, where the voting delegates, who are the representatives of the owners of Family Motor Coach Association, will choose four national officers to continue to lead us further into the 21st century and to keep FMCA on the path to financial health and prosperity. Keep in mind, it is you, each and every individual member — whether a chapter member or not — who owns FMCA. So, I hope you have read each resume presented in the May 2013 issue of Family Motor Coaching magazine carefully, and let your voting delegate know your preference for these important positions.
June is also a month of celebrations, and days of remembrance: Flag Day; Father’s Day; Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day in Quebec; and, of course, the first day of summer. As the song lyrics say, there is a season for everything and a time for every purpose under heaven. And so it is with this column. I have been privileged to bring my thoughts about motorhoming to you in this space since 2009. I have endeavored to excite the reader into expanding the use and enjoyment of motorhome ownership; to experience the freedom, the unparalleled feeling of traveling in a home on wheels; to savor the ability to spend evenings in the presence of beautiful sunsets, and to bed down beside gurgling mountain streams in a forest campground with the wispy smell of a dying campfire borne on the evening breeze as it rustles the curtains on the window.
With the elections of your new national officers — national president, national senior vice president, national secretary, and national treasurer — I will be assuming the position of immediate past president at the annual membership meeting, Saturday, June 22, 2013. Jean and I would like to thank all of you — each and every member we have met, spoken with on the phone, or communicated with via e-mail — for the support, the thoughtful conversations, and also for the well wishes during a health issue we had a few years ago. It has been our pleasure to have had the opportunity to serve Family Motor Coach Association; I say our and we, because one cannot take on the responsibilities of this office without the dedicated support of their best friend — in my case, my wife, Jean.
So, don’t wait for the wind to push you together with your friends and other Family members; come out and enjoy an international Reunion, an area rally, a chapter rally, or just get a group together and spend a week or weekend discovering the joys of motorhoming.
See you down the road. Until then, safe and healthy travels.