[NFBV-Announce] Epilogue, Your Voice, and the Next Book in Our Story

[Joe Orozco]

Hello everyone!

It used to be that sailors used shorelines, bird migration patterns,
and wind and water currents to journey the seas. Of course with time,
technology evolved, and travel by celestial navigation was enhanced by
satellites and a variety of sophisticated hardware and software to
move safely from one point to the next.

Our travels as a collective blindness movement has not been all that
different. Do you remember even twenty years ago when we had to write
down walking directions from services like MapQuest to get from, say,
a train station to our next job interview site? So many fond memories
of getting lost in the DMV, but somehow, we always got to where we
needed to go. And this year’s state convention served as a fine
reminder of where we came from and where we are headed, as individuals
and as members of a larger movement.

We want to take a moment to thank the various hands who played, and
are continuing to play, a role in steering the ship through the
various complexities of a convention operation. Each year the program
becomes just a little more detailed, requiring a stronger need for
people to answer the call to serve in order that we might deliver the
sort of agenda you need to feel empowered, energized, and confident
that no matter the challenge, you and your Federation family will meet
it head-on.

Before I move to the slew of gratitude messages, remember your input
is always critical in shaping next year’s convention program. If you
could kindly take three minutes of your time to complete our brief,
but informative, survey, we would be grateful. Your feedback will be
just as important if you tuned in virtually so that we are made aware
of the sound quality reaching you at your remote locations. We’d love
it if you completed the survey by Friday, November 24:

https://nfbv.org/survey

As always, the difficulty in recognizing people by name is that we
will inevitably leave people out. This is purely a lack of accidental
oversight on our part. I’ve tried hard to painstakingly capture
everyone, but teams recruit volunteers on the fly. Every one’s names
do not always find their way to us. If you do not see your name below,
please know we were still blessed for you lending a hand.

Thank you to our national representative, Donald Porterfield, and his
wife, Amy Porterfield, for giving generously of their time to be with
us, break bread with us, and serving as our key liaisons to our
national movement.

Thank you to the entirety of the Greater Williamsburg Chapter for
arranging the Colonial Williamsburg tours, for working in sync with
the Delta Gamma sorority to provide us extra volunteers, for procuring
excellent door prizes, for orchestrating an elegantly appointed
reception, procuring distinguished guest speakers and fantastic
entertainment, and generally making us all feel at home in their local
area. Hosting is no small feat, and we especially thank Dal Bailey,
Carrol Bailey, Jacki Bruce, Colin Bruce, Dana Dishman, Lisa Kavitz,
Mike Lengyel, Dana Lengyel, Deborah Jackson, Jackie Greenhow, and
Corlis Jones for going above and beyond in their role as hosts of this
fine gathering. Chapter President Robert Meter has been hard at work
on formulating a plan since January, creating the warm atmosphere we
enjoyed.

Thank you to all the general session speakers, breakout facilitators,
panelists, and guest speakers for creating the backbone to this year’s
exemplary agenda.

Long after the Federation spirit has fled the building, Mark Roane has
to deal with me and the hotel with all manner of accounting demands.
The convention doesn’t come cheap. Add to this the operational
expenses of running various state programs, and Mark’s job is never
easy. In some ways, Mark’s convention experience is still a few weeks
from being done. It’s possible we will not fully understand how
fortunate we are to have Mark until Mark decides to retire many years
from now.

Convention sites are planned years in advance. We recently tapped
Stewart Prost to begin scouting as far ahead as 2026, and his level of
attention to detail and supreme follow-through will ensure we lock in
the most competitive rates for our membership in the midst of a
difficult market.

Stewart also served as one of our floor managers to keep the ship
firmly on course and on time during the plenary sessions. Stewart was
accompanied by Michael Casey and Renee Valdez. John Bailey served as a
president’s special assistant.

We’re very grateful to our out-of-state guests who took it upon
themselves to visit us and roll up their sleeves. Grace Anderson and
Larry and Sue Povinelli from Alabama plugged themselves in where ever
they saw a need, and that’s always a phenomenal type of volunteer.

Thank you specifically to Grace, and Gerald and Alisha Meredith for
serving at our scholarship mixer and veteran’s event respectively. Sue
and Larry , Harold Wilson, Grace, Uricka Harrison, and John Bailey
also served at our first timer’s welcome event.

Can you hear me now? You wouldn’t have been able to hear anything had
it not been for the audio engineering prowess of our sound guys,
Michael Kitchens and Wayne Williams. Despite the environmental
barriers, they worked their magic to amplify the Federation zeal
across the main ballroom and certain breakout sessions. Michael and
Wayne are a conference organizer’s ideal set it and forget it dream
team.

And how about that registration workflow? Okay, so Brown Paper Tickets
was something of a beast, but trust me, it would have been a lot worse
had Jacki Bruce not worked with her team to give members that extra
love and assistance to get squared away. Jacki was assisted by Wayne
Williams, Michael Kitchens, Sarah  Blumberg, Kris Foley, James
Shilbert, Natasha McConaughey, Jenny Blinsmon, Collin Bruce, Sandy
Halverson, Mary Durbin, Rachel Schreiman,  Carol Bailey, and Chris
Infante.

Our information table was overseen by Annette Carr and Nancy Yeager.
We couldn’t have picked two of the nicest people in the affiliate to
help field your questions on site as the weekend progressed, and I
hope we can count on them again to be that courteous voice in the
midst of an ever shifting schedule.

Chimere Roberts supervised our box lunch distributions. She was
assisted by Lois Fritz, Chris Infante, and April Harrington. We’re
very grateful to these folks for validating meal counts to make our
lives easier on the post convention side of our responsibilities.

Nothing makes our auctions jump like the enthusiastic vigor of Jacki
Brown! This year was no exception. Thank you to everyone who
contributed auction items, and thank you to Domonique Lawless, Laurie
Wages, Sharon Soforenko, Jacob Ham, Renee Valdez, Gary Grassman, and
Collin Bruce for carting items back and forth, displaying, processing
payments, and generally doing everything to make the auction the
rousing fundraiser we have all come to love. Thanks to their efforts,
the auction raised more than $8,500 this year in support of the Silver
BELLS program.

Our sponsorship and exhibits program was taken over by a new team this
year. Teisha Collins brought her marketing experience to full effect
and helped fill all our table space in the exhibit hall. Mary Durbin,
our exhibits manager, deftly directed traffic on the day of the event
and juggled the details needed to make it an enjoyable for all
visitors. Thanks to their leadership and the assistance of Deborah
Prost and Annie Ascher, the team brought in $3,175 in sponsorship
funds, which is outstanding considering how late in the planning cycle
we recruited their assistance.

Our state programs keep the engine humming around the year. In the
senior track we were fortunate to have the support of Senior’s
Division President Patty Droppers; Silver BELLS Coordinator, Sandy
Halverson; and Silver BELLS Outreach Coordinator, Renee Valdez,
drawing in more than 50 senior guests.

Our youth track was a rousing success, attracting 18 student
participants. The outreach, recruitment, and execution could not have
been possible without the leadership of Louise Walch--assisted by Kari
Brimhall, Mary Jo Hartle, Amy Porterfield, Jacki Bruce, Becky Keller,
Jimmy Morris, Domonique Lawless, Evelyn Valdez, Maria Valdez, Jackie
Larory, Casey Reyes, Ally Kelso, Lauren Altman, and Tracy Soforenko.
Delta Gamma volunteers who helped with childcare and youth track
included: Cassidy Gersten, Jessica Sigsbee, Mandy Joyce, Eve Sloan,
Rosita Li, Bridget Collins, and Monica Cabes.

Project RISE brought in 12 students from around the state, and it was
my pleasure to be assisted by Alysha Hiller, Sean McMahon, Evelyn
Valdez, Ameenah Ghoston, Jacki Bruce, and Michael Kitchens. It’s
always our privilege to be able to work in tandem on student
programming with the Virginia Association of Blind Students and its
now former president, Ally Kelso, as well as the scholarship program
and its chair, Jimmy Morris.

I want to acknowledge three ladies in the affiliate who made a huge
sacrifice this year. Two of them have been here before. One of them
was just introduced to this level of involvement. All three of them
are married to Type A personalities who obsessed over little details
to keep the ship afloat. Sue Meter is a rock star and wonderful
addition to the NFB of Virginia family and bright beacon in the
Greater Williamsburg Chapter. My wife, Julie, no stranger to NFB
demands, understood the pressure and patiently ran with it on top of
her own law school demands, and Sharon Soforenko likely wishes the
pressure would ease with the conclusion of our state convention. As
first lady to the affiliate, the involvement, responsibilities, and
expectations are relentless. There are no words to adequately describe
how grateful we are to each of these ladies for the power and energy
they bring to the fueling of convention operations and beyond.

I want to acknowledge the efforts of a certain gentleman. He ought to
be commended for juggling, for not allowing important balls to drop,
for fielding questions from a wide audience, for representing us well
to the wider world, and for putting up with Tracy... Haha, you thought
I was talking about Tracy? I kid, I kid. Tracy does this and so much
more. As we speak, he is working hard on helping a team to prepare for
litigation, getting ready to serve as national representative for
another state convention, and is already ramping up to help launch our
legislative campaigns at the state and national levels alongside the
respective coordinators. I wish I could say we get a break when he
goes on vacation. Yet, somehow, I always seem to get direction from
him even when he’s in the middle of the ocean. I want to pretend to be
irked, but we are truly blessed to have Tracy as our president who
cares enough about the community to do these things and so much more.

I think that covers it. Hopefully, in a few short weeks, we will be
able to officially close the chapter on another largely successful
convention. If there are things you want to positively highlight, and
things you would like to see improved, please use the survey linked
above to make your voice heard.

And, get ready. We’re pulling away from Williamsburg and turning the
ship toward Portsmouth. We’ve charted the course. The forecast looks
promising. The Tidewater and Peninsula Chapters are revved up and
ready to bring their A Game to #NFBV24. More special tracks, more
special interests, more reasons for you to clear your calendar the
weekend of October 31 through November 3. It’s NFBV, maritime edition,
and we intend to make a splash the likes of which can only be produced
by Team Virginia!

Until next time,

Joe Orozco, Convention Operations