Portland Hospitality Suite

When Ann and I volunteered to co-host the Hospitality Suite we didn’t anticipate the subsequent luxury quarters it was our good fortune to land, the Presidential Suite of the Doubletree. We sure missed Grady being there, but David Wagner was there to help when he could sandwich some time between the 14 other jobs he had.  Bruce Anderson and Dave Stock also gave a lot of time and were excellent conversationalists with the guests who came in.

Our first afternoon there, when we returned from our shopping trip for supplies, a friend of mine from California said a young quartet had been by the room. Since I had had e-mail contact with them earlier I presume it was the Nile Manski Trio, but they never did get back. Couldn’t keep notes, but some of the quartets who came by and sang for us were Saturday Evening Post, KaBlam, Road Show, and Presto. The president of Central States District spent a lot of time with us and of course many other old and new friends. We did sign up some new members, but of course not nearly as many as we had hoped for.

In my opinion this initial effort was worth the effort. We did get a considerable amount of recognition for PROBE, in concert with the great projection display during the competition and meetings. The cost to PROBE for the Hospitality Suite was only about $200.

This makes a foundation, and hopefully a jump-start for the continuing membership drive.  As a pure membership drive at International it would probably be most effective to have a booth in the Harmony Marketplace, but that would require a lot of volunteer (specific) man-hours. Dave Stock is enthusiastic and full of ideas, and will have recommendations for any possible action in Montreal next year.

We will be there.