Vintage Flight Line Situation Resolved!

The Vintage Board met Saturday and the results of that meeting officially hit the streets this morning (though I got a text shortly after the meeting concluded that I wasn't at liberty to relay).

The three dismissed chairmen previously discussed have been reinstated.
Susan Dusenbury, a fellow North Carolinian and relative newcomer to the board (but a long time VAAer, she has been the running our local VAA chapter for years) has been named President of the VAA.

A big sigh of relief from the ranks has been heard.

Well, what was the reason for all the drama? And what changed, allowing them to be reinstated?

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Originally Posted by dougbush

Well, what was the reason for all the drama? And what changed, allowing them to be reinstated?

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No official reason given. A lot of the underling volunteers contacted the VAA board and Jack Pelton (and a few of us were in contact with acquaintances on the EAA board). The full VAA board met and reversed the decision. In addition, the president (Geoff Robinson) decided to retire. Other than that, I suspect we will not hear any more.

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Originally Posted by FlyingRon

No official reason given. A lot of the underling volunteers contacted the VAA board and Jack Pelton (and a few of us were in contact with acquaintances on the EAA board). The full VAA board met and reversed the decision. In addition, the president (Geoff Robinson) decided to retire. Other than that, I suspect we will not hear any more.

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Sad, very sad and shameful. Such a waste of invested time and emotion. The firings and subsequent reinstatements all sound like bulls**t high school and office politics. I assume the VAA board is elected or acclaimed. As a result, they have a duty to be transparent and accountable to the members. If they do not provide a full and truthful official reason for all the drama they caused and initiated, they must all be forced to resign immediately. You deserve a new Board that actually feels responsible to its members, no less, no more.

Both the EAA and VAA boards are elected (subject to some variations, the various EAA subsidiaries: Warbirds, Vintage, IAC, etc... get a seat for their president). The problem is proxies. The core EAA guys (in the past the Pobereznys) had a large block of the general membership proxies which pretty much meant they determined who sat on the board. About ten years ago we tried to go out on the intenret and solicit enough proxies to put a non-Tom approved board member in place (notably Jim Wier, the "d" is silent). We couldn't overcome the corporate inertia.

Actually, in my opinion, the board was perfectly responsive. This whole incident was a knee-jerk reaction to a single incident with a volunteer of storied history that tainted a lot of the volunteer "management" which resulted in a rather ill-advisedd "off with their heads" response from the VAA management. When things calmed down, cooler heads prevailed.