Tampa Chapter
October 2017
Contents
Meeting
announcements
Revolution
History note
Program
Schedule
Other
Dates of Interest
Dues are Due
Honor Flight
Vietnam Traveling Memorial Wall
Misc.
reminders and information
Meeting Announcements
October
The next meeting of the
Tampa Chapter, Sons of the American Revolution, will held on Saturday, Oct. 21.
at the Golden Corral in Temple Terrace.
The new venue worked out fine last month. As always, members will start gathering at
11:30, the formal meeting will start at 12:00 with a break for lunch. Please remember to pay on your way in and
keep your receipt for the waitress. This
month Bob Yarnell will be presenting a brief book review of Washington’s
Immortals, President Charles Krug will make a brief presentation on Cato:
A Tragedy and Compatriot Dick Young will be making two SAR heroism
awards to Tampa Police Department officers.
The street address for the Golden Corral is:
11801 N 56th St
Tampa, FL 33617
(813) 899-1833
September
The
September meeting of the Tampa Chapter, Sons of the American Revolution,
was held at a new location, the Golden Corral in Temple Terrace.
Our speaker
was local author Nancy Turner. She made an enthusiastic presentation
on the U.S.S. Tampa. From 1913-1917, the U.S.S. Tampa (formerly known as the U.S.S. Miami) sailed alongside the ship Jose Gaspar, firing
her cannons to the delight of Tampa parade-goers. During WWI, she
escorted 18 convoys in the North Atlantic, and, in October 1918, she was sunk
off the coast of Gibraltar with more than 100 crewmembers - 24 from Tampa -
aboard. Ms. Turner presented the storied and little-known history of the USS Tampa. She also advised us that, to mark the 100th
anniversary of the sinking of the USS
Tampa, a memorial mural
will be placed at the Tampa Bay History Center.
Revolution History Note:
The
topic for the next two months is how historical sites (battlefields and homes,
for example) speak to us. We’ll begin by
looking at how the people involved and the geography
of the place informs us about what happened.
Primary Sources:
We start with those
involved in the action that occurred at the site or the people who lived
there. More specifically, we look for
written accounts - letters, diaries, journals, etc. - relating to the event or
the location. These written primary
sources are the meat and potatoes of historical research but, as everyone
knows, using eyewitness accounts can be tricky.
People seeing the same event can offer different descriptions. A general’s account of a battle will differ
markedly from that a private simply based on what they were each in a position to see.
Memoirs written later in life might suffer from poor memory or a
person’s desire to re-write history in their favor.
Eye
witness accounts include more than just letters written home after a battle or
a commander’s after-action report. A plantation’s ledgers or letters telling us
what was ordered, what was shipped and what was being grown or manufactured can
tell us a great deal. Something as
seemingly mundane as a note home from the teacher can shed light on the
education of the children living at that location.
Using
primary sources can be fun - the guilty pleasure of reading someone else’s mail
- but also frustrating due to the contradictions and incompleteness of the
written sources available to us.
Despite this, written primary sources are the necessary starting point
for any look at what happened.
Geography:
Without knowledge of the topography and location of a site
a complete picture cannot be formed. A
very good example of this is the Battle of Cowpens during the War for American
Independence. As Compatriot Jack Bolen
has observed in his talks to the chapter about Cowpens, the dispositions of
Gen. Morgan and the problems the British faced in their advance all fall into
place when the undulations of the ground are observed.
Similarly, when studying a house or settlement it is
important to start with the question, “Why here?” While the answer usually revolves around availability
of water, nearness to a river or the sea, as was the case with most colonial
settlements, proximity to needed resources—lumber, coal or iron—also influenced
site selection.
Thus,
understanding the geographic location and topography of a site are necessary
for us to get a more complete picture of what happened there.
While
primary sources, geography, and topography are important, these are not our
only tools in examining an historic site. Next month we’ll look at the
archaeology - what artifacts have been found and what they tell us. And we’ll
ask if the location has changed since the events took place or since the
“historic” people lived there as any changes can significantly impact our
understanding of the place or event.
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Program Schedule
Nov 18 Law Enforcement &
Fire Fighter Commendation and Recognition
Dec 17 Brief business meeting
after Wreaths across America ceremony —
site to
be determined
Tentative—Christmas
social get-together
Jan. Officer Installation - site to be determined
Feb/March—Tentative hopes for
a joint meeting with the DAR and a speaker on genealogy for one of the meetings
and speaker on the Revolution for the other.
April JROTC recognition
May perhaps Sept speaker re-scheduled; perhaps local museum speaker; perhaps Rodney Kite-Powell of the Tampa Bay
History Center
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Other Dates of
Interest
October 25-30 - Vietnam
Memorial Traveling Wall
Hillsborough
County Veterans Memorial Park
November 3-4 - Florida Society BOM
Meeting – Kissimmee
November 11 Veterans Day (plan to attend a Veterans Day ceremony near you - there are lots to choose from)
December 16 - Wreaths Across America
Ceremony
_________________________________________________________
Dues Are Due
By
now, everyone should have received a dues renewal notice from Membership
Secretary Jason Krajnyak. Please bring a check to this meeting or put
check in mail to address in Due's Notice as soon as you can. Many thanks for your prompt attention to this
matter.
If
you are an SAR Life Member, you pay only State and Chapter Dues
If
you are active duty military, you pay only National Dues
If
you are a Junior Member, your dues are paid by the Tampa Chapter.
_________________________________________________________
Honor Flight September 26,
2017
Members
of the Tampa Chapter Color Guard (Dick Young and Alan Bell, Commander) joined
the DAR Clearwater Chapter, C.A.R. Clear Water Harbor Society and the DAR
Junior American Citizens at the Welcome Home celebration for the 75 veterans of
WWII, Korea and Vietnam who went on the West Central Florida Honor Flight
Mission # 31. Honor Flight took them to visit the memorials in Washington DC placed
to honor them and their fellow citizen soldiers of these and other wars fought to
protect the freedoms of our United States of America. The next WCF Honor Flight is scheduled for
Tuesday October 24. Everyone is invited
and encouraged to attend the Welcome Home celebration. To learn more about our
local Honor Flights, you can visit their website at www.honorflightwcf.org.
_________________________________________________________
Vietnam Memorial Traveling Wall
The
Traveling Wall will be available to visit on October 26 - 30 at the
Hillsborough County Veterans Memorial Park.
The Colonel George Mercer Brooke Chapter of DAR at Sun City is the
official sponsor of The Wall for this event.
The Tampa Chapter of Vietnam Veterans of America is helping to
coordinate volunteers to set up The Wall on the evening of October 25 and take
it down on October 30. They also need
volunteers to help guests find names on The Wall and to provide overnight
security. Anyone interested in
volunteering should contact Jim Fletcher of Tampa VVA at jamesmfletcher@aol.com
or 813-352-2764.
_________________________________________________________
Misc. Notes and reminders:
Chapter
Website—remember you can find information about the chapter and programs on the
chapter website. http://www.tampasar.org/
One
of the duties of the Chapter Chaplain John Sessums is to send cards to our
members that are sick. Another is to send a sympathy card to the family of a
member who has passed away. If you know of anyone that should be the recipient
of these cards please mention it to the Chaplain or one of the other officers at
our next meeting.
Chapter
officers and committee chairman are encouraged to send any pertinent
information they wish included in the newsletter to the Newsletter Editor Bob
Yarnell at rsyarn@aol.com.