Underwater Archaeological Society of Chicago

Minutes

October 28, 2015

Bob Rushman welcomed twelve members on a stormy pre-Halloween night. Minutes were available.

The Treasurer and Vice President were not present.

• ICSSD update - President's Night was a great success, everyone had a good time, there was a big raffle, the organization did well financially, and fifty-one people had a delicious feast at Sawa's Restaurant. The owner not only rescued the event by replacing Klaus restaurant who cancelled but also stayed open late to accommodate us. The Marines even won some raffle gifts because a UASC member gave half of his raffle tickets to them. The Tritons won all the awards. ICSSD Club Appreciation night will be the third Thursday in February.
• Diving - Dean Nolan dived the Tacoma and Material Service Barge but the visibility was awful.
• Chicago Maritime Museum - Jim Jarecki and Scott Reimer attended the WUA conference in Greenbay and said it was a good mix of wreck history done with quality research. There were only 35 attendees, probably because the meeting information was sent out late.
• Illinois Railway Museum - Sam Polonetsky said that there will be a delay with setting up the Car Ferry exhibit because there are three Amtrack baggage cars coming to the museum, for use as exhibit cars. Space in one will be reserved for us. It will be a better space than we were previously offered but results in a significant delay in completing the UASC exhibit.

New Business

Colin will be our new webmaster and will post all this year's minutes. We’re very pleased that Colin has agreed to take on this role and get the UASC web site back on track. Also, members are encouraged to write articles for our site.

The slate of officers so far is President, Bob Rushman, Vice-President, Dean Nolan, Treasurer, to be confirmed, and Secretary, Carol Sommers. Nominations are open if you are interested. Elections will be at the November meeting. These are the positions which are elected, others are appointed.

Joan Forsberg & Cris Kohl are putting out a new dive guide and UASC will have a full-page ad. They have requested recent still photos of the Buccaneeer and any new information that may be available on the Flora Hill and Silver Spray ASAP.

A future meeting will be selected for wreck survey training and other speakers are needed to fill out the 2016 meeting program.

Scott Reimer will get a booth for Our World Underwater, but instead of renting carpet for the booth , Scott will look into obtaining carpet squares that could be used at all the shows.

Program

Our planned speaker had cancelled so Carol Sommers showed photos of the Intrepid Aircraft Carrier and the Air and Space Museum of New York City which she visited the previous week. There were photos of an Avenger which was one of the types of planes which is in Lake Michigan. The Intrepid was the size of three soccer fields, but the upper deck was teak since it was lighter than steel and easier to repair. Two Kamikaze planes hit the ship on one day during WWII but the crew put out the fires and after a short time in port for repairs, surprised the Japanese by coming back into service. Besides viewing many planes on the flight deck, including the A12 Blackbird spy plane which could see someone's fingernail from an altitude of 35,000 feet, there were photos of one of the Space Shuttles, a British Airways Concorde and many interior shots of the Growler submarine which in the sixties carried atomic missiles capable of wiping out all of Manhattan and surrounding areas.

The next meeting will be Wednesday, November 18 --note that this is earlier than usual because of the Thanksgiving holiday.

Minutes respectfully submitted by Carol Sommers.