The Hotel 2/5 Academy Awards is a periodic event celebrating reunion awards conferred by the Hotel 2/5 Academy’s Board of Governors. Hum, you might be wondering, who the heck is on this Board of Directors? Well, it’s only me! (Larry Tyler) So let’s get on with it.
And now, (big drum roll . . .) the Hotel 2/5 Academy Awards show presents this year’s categories and honorary recipients. The Hotel 2/5 Academy (that has a nice ring to its name doesn’t it?) would like to recognize certain attendees for their volunteer efforts in making our reunions great and successful.
This evening we have six categories to present awards to. Rather than announce the category first, I will announce the winners by name first, then we will guess what the category is.
The 2017 honorees are:
- Carlie Peterson, Jay Peterson, Dave Harbin, Robert Hardrick, and yours truly, Larry Tyler.
Category is: Our Annual Hardrick Communications Award
- Carlie for being newsletter writer, editor, and publisher
- Jay for Photojournalist, newsletter Sr. Editor, email correspondence and distribution guru
- David for being our announcer and proclaimer of our Santa Fe Reunion
- Robert for making the mostest daily phone calls to most reunion attendees throughout the year
- Larry for Hotel 2/5 Website Master, creator, and editor
- Carlie Peterson, Carolin Peterson, Brenda Smith, Rita Tyler
Category is: R&R (Registration and Receptionist) Award
- Carlie – for her “sweet smiles and laughter” and ability to quickly troubleshoot and correct our registration mistakes
- Carolin – for her wisdom for being the “know-it-all” for registration questions to answer all the questions that comes up during the registration period
- Brenda – for her keen ability to “know all shirt sizes” and manage the shirt and sweatshirt distribution each year
- Rita – for her “brilliant idea” to organize the registration process this year with lanyards, printed itineraries, bags and printed spreadsheets
- Rita Tyler
Category: Betsy Ross Award
- Rita – not for the reason that Betsy was married three or four times but for creating, designing, sewing and maintaining our flags, reunion streamers and making our new guidon flag
- Joe & Lynn Sonderman, Anthony Cardisco, Frank Armenta, Paco Armenta, Ron & Judy Drez, Jay & Carolin Peterson, Jim Hayden, Sunny Heinonion, Al Gautshi, Dave & Bonnie Harbin
Category: Gracious Host Award
Joe & Linn – Has managed the most reunions ever
Al – the man who started it all with a pig roast
Anthony – a pioneer in H 2/5 reunion planning
Frank and Paco – Paid the parade audience to “thank us for our service” and who brought us back to the Arizona Territory
Ron & Judy – Brought us back to the Battle of New Orleans, steamboat Judy!
Jay & Linn – who forced us to remember our bootcamp and ITR training days
Jim – reintroduced us to real country music, honkey tonk, and that smooth jazz
Sunny – Always wanting to be a Navy pilot or a battleship gunner and brings us lots of sunshine
Dave & Bonnie – responsible for bringing us here to the oldest city in New Mexico (1610) and introducing us to “Holy Faith” – the Spanish meaning of the words Santa Fe
These Gracious Hosts have spent literally hundreds of hours planning, preparing, and working for each reunion. Thank you for your service to us.
- Joe Sonderman, Larry Tyler, Jay Peterson
Category: Appreciation Award
Joe Sonderman, Jay Peterson – appreciation for their leadership, managing registration, coordinating communications, establishing budgets, signing contracts, and paying the bills
(Read each Award when presenting the trophies)
- You Know Who You Are
Category: Special Attendance Award
There is a hidden but very special group of men sitting here tonight that I personally want to thank for sacrificing yourself to be here with us. You all know who you are; you have struggled this past year with illness, surgeries, pain, health difficulties and medical challenges. Yet, in spite of all of this suffering, you came to be among us. I know who you all are so everyone in this group please stand up. (Applause) Thank you, you may be seated. In spite of all your health issues this year, you came and are showing to all of us your expression of love to us by being here. We appreciate all of you, love all of you, and are praying for speedy recoveries and better health. May God bless you in the following days we have left on this good earth.
Note: The Academy wishes to announce that for any of you here tonight that deserved an award, but weren’t recognized, we are truly sorry and that you remove this H 2/5 academy member from this office and create your own H 2/5 academy awards show for next year!
2 Comments
Amy Smith
What a wonderful time you folks have at your Meet and Greet time.
larrytyler
As you can see from the above script, we have a lot of fun on the first night of our reunions at our “Meet and Greet” session. Here, we presented certificates (no trophies) to all who helped in making the Santa Fe 2017 Reunion very successful. If you haven’t been to any of our reunions, we have a lot of fun getting to know each other, reminiscing the experiences (good and bad) of the Vietnam War, and spending time on group outings together. Please join us at our next annual reunion!