The 2024 ASURA Annual Meeting was held at Ability 360 from 1:00 to 3:30 on April 17, 2024. Although attendance was lighter than expected, we did have ten past Presidents and seventeen members who had served on or chaired one of our committees.

Kay Faris, ASURA President, planned and executed a wonderful program. Kay had help from Trudy Perez, refreshments and venue, Jan Shore, scholarship recipient, Connie McNeill, honored volunteer material, Barry McNeill, Video History clips and the Board in selecting a speaker. If you missed the meeting, you missed one of the better Annual Meetings that I’ve attended.

Prologue – The Arrival

While Kay was scurrying around getting her presentation running and putting copies of the ever popular “Annual Report” on all the tables, ASURA members begin arriving and signing in. Some immediately headed for the snack tables which had candy for their sweet tooth or fruit for their health. Others saw old acquaintances and small discussion groups formed talking of Micheal Angelo or perhaps cabbages and kings. A few were seen leafing through the “Annual Report”.

Chapter 1 Honorees

At the stroke of 1:20 pm Kay opened the meeting on time and after thanking Trudy for the snacks got right into the business of recognizing five volunteers for their years of service. Kay pointed out, as we all know but sometimes forget, there is no pay for volunteer work – only the realization that they are doing something for ASU retirees.

Before presenting the honorees, Kay outlined the criteria used to select from the long list of volunteers. The criteria decided on was that the volunteer had to have:

• served as committee chairs/member, board member, Office volunteer, etc. for more than 10 years, and
• appeared to have “retired” from ASURA—Kay called this retired retired!!! Or retired squared!

When the criteria were applied, five members popped up: Becky Reiss, Carolyn Minner, Dave Scheatzle, Elmer Gooding and Dave Schwalm. All but Becky were present.

The recognitions were quite nice. We saw slides with pictures of the honorees and listened to a brief "history" of their ASU and ASURA life from Kay. You can view the slides and read Kay's remarks by clicking on the links on this page.

At the conclusion of each presentation Kay presented the honoree with a gift. And what was the gift? Typical of Kay she did not just buy the first thing she thought of but rather spent some time carefully mulling over what would make a good gift. She knew that retirees are at a stage where they don’t need or want another long-lasting doodad or nick knack. So she decided to focus on consumables. Maybe something personal and she pulled a bottle of shampoo out of her “gift” bag. That did not seem quite right, so maybe something more utilitarian and she pulled out a roll of toilet paper. It is not 2020 so maybe this was not such a good idea either. Kay eventually gave up and decided on something she liked, a plant. Each honoree received a beautiful Christmas cactus from the Botanical Garden. Kay was told the plants could live 100 years with good care which did not exactly fit the consumable criteria but they were lovely.

Chapter 2 – Registered Independent

Before introducing the guest speaker, Kay announced something new, a raffle. Three names were drawn from a bowl and given ten-dollar gift cards (Starbucks, Amazon). By some piece of incredible luck my name was drawn first.

Kay then introduced the guest speaker, Dr. Thom Reilly. Dr. is a professor in the School of Public Affairs and Co-Director, Center for an Independent and Sustainable Democracy at Arizona State University (ASU). He previously had served as Director of the Morrison Institute for Public Policy at ASU. 

Dr. Reilly’s talk was titled “The rise of the independent voter and what this means for US democracy”. The first part of the talk dwelled on the issue that the founding fathers did not want to have a two-party system and were pretty adamantly against such an arrangement. We ended up with a two party system and he pointed out that, until recently, the two party system actually worked pretty well with checks and balances.

Dr. Reilly presented data showing the increase in the percentage of voters registering as independent. One of his research interests is understanding who these registered independent voters are. I think the main issue I got out of the talk was that people who register as independent are more interested in issues than parties. One statistic I found interesting was that in some demographics upwards of fifty percent of the young members were registering as independent.

The talk concluded with a discussion of the impact independent voters have on the primaries and the mish mash of laws from state to state defining who can and cannot vote in a primary. He pointed out that in Arizona a registered independent voter can vote in the primary by simply showing up on voting day and asking for a ballot for the party they wanted to vote in.

Chapter 3 – Scholarship Recipient

Before Jan Shore introduced the scholarship recipient, three more names were drawn for the raffle. Jan introduced Bea Ahbeck by saying how easy it had been to pick her out in the pool of applicants. Ms. Ahbeck lives in Lodi, California and is enrolled in the College of Global Futures. She continues the growing list of online scholarship recipients from California. 

Ms. Ahbeck thanked ASURA for the scholarship and then told us about her path back to school. At eighteen she left home to make her way in the world. She had different jobs over the years, photojournalism being a thread connecting many of the jobs. After being laid off once again she decided it was time to change course and enrolled in ASU. She will graduate in August 2024.

Chapter 4 – Video Clips

Three more lucky attendees won the raffle before Kay introduced Don Doerres, chair of the Video History Project. Kay pointed out that there are 90+ interviews available for viewing on our website. Don said the selection of the video clips was easy this year because we had Video History Project interviews for three of the volunteer honorees. It was fun to hear:

• Elmer talking about budget revertments, money sent back to the State at the end of the fiscal year, and how the administration started squirreling away money early in the fiscal year to pay the anticipated revertment.
• Dave Schwalm talking about the tuition payment scheme that allowed a student, enrolled in ASU but taking some courses from Chandler Gilbert Community College to pay Community College tuition for the CC courses and ASU tuition for the ASU courses.
• Dave Scheatzle telling us about getting the funding for a new Architecture building. The Regents were visiting the campus to see about funding five new buildings. Even though Architecture was not in the top five, it was next in line, so the Regents decided to visit it anyway. It was a rainy day and the Regents saw Architecture students working under umbrellas as water was dripping down from the ceiling. Architecture got its new building and Music had to wait.

You can view the clips by clicking on the Video Clips button on this page.

Chapter 5 – Leadership Change

Kay mentioned that it been a pleasure to serve as president, an experience she highly recommended!  She then handed the leadership gavel over to Maria Hesse and the presidency passed on. Maria thanked Kay for her dedication to leading ASURA this past year and said she was looking forward to the next year.

Maria then thanked:

• the continuing Board members: Jo Ellen Alberhasky, Bev Buddee, Partha Dasgupta, Terrie Ekin, Will Stasi, Jeff Bush, Carl Cross, Don Dotts, Maria Hesse, and Kathy Palmanteer,
• those who were ending their three years of service: Rojann Alpers, Barry McNeill, Helene Ossipov, and Tara Roesler, and
• the past executive team: Barry McNeill, Treasurer; Will Stacy, Past President; Partha Dasgupta, Secretary; and Maria Hesse, VP.

Before gaveling the meeting closed, she told us an interesting tidbit. It turned out, that many moons ago, Anne Pittman, our third President and source of our carrot birthday cakes, was her tennis coach.

Maria closed this very enjoyable Annual Meeting which was full of fun surprises and sent everyone over to Trudy to get a slice of ASURA’s 34th birthday carrot cake.

Story and pictures by Barry McNeill