Cindy has a great list of speakers for our future luncheons. This month we will have LtCol Mark Bortnem, USMC, the Commanding Officer of VMFA-232. His squadron just returned from a 6-month deployment to Japan. I don’t know much about these forward deployments but I am hoping that Mark can fill me (and you) in on it. Our November meeting will host a tandem briefing that will be super interesting. I’ll let Cindy present that one – I don’t want to steal her thunder. In December we tentatively have an Army pilot who became an astronaut. It is too early to announce his name but if he can make it, I really want to get the word out to young and old to attend. How often do you get an astronaut talk about his time in space? As for me, I want to hear about his flying in Vietnam when he was the pilot in combat (two tours!)
I am writing this column about two weeks before our meeting. I am heading down to Miramar to watch the airshow and search for speakers. Unfortunately, I am running late so this will be short. I’ll take a couple of photos to add to this column so you get a taste of the show. Maybe next year I can get a couple of members to go with me.
Next weekend, October 4-6 is the Huntington Beach airshow. Julie and I are hosting some out-of-town guests who have traveled up from El Centro to watch the show for the first time. I’ll be with them part of the time, watching the Thunderbirds, Canadian AF Snowbirds and Red Arrows, A-10, F-18 and F-35 among others. It should be a very entertaining airshow. I hope that some of you get to attend.
As always, bring your friends, neighbors, relatives or business associates to our luncheons. You never know whether they will want to keep coming until they come the first time. We need to recruit new members and we need better attendance at the luncheons. Until the next meeting, goodbye for now and off I go to Miramar.
