Westover ARB Chicopee, MA
I am very pleased about our performance at the Westover Air Show this weekend. Great job! Everyone pitched in and made a top-notch effort. Some new displays were established which included: Dave and Dave Jr. with their Medic / equipment display in the squad tent, Martha with her “Knitting for Victory” display, and Joe with his awesome new movie studio set-up. Special thanks as usual to John D. for his Signal Corps equipment, Diane, Chris, Karey, Jeanne, and new recruit Briana for the WAC/Red Cross/home front displays, and Gil and John V. for roasting out in the hot sun to show their field gear displays. And extra big props to Bob, Steve, and Kenny for trucking down their vehicles. They’re always a show favorite and thanks for the transportation around camp.
Last but not least, thank you very much to Captain Mazzarella for keeping his commitment to attend this weekend and transport the big tents. Cap, with all you went through last week, you are a real inspiration! My condolences again to your family.
I was really glad to see how great a of display we put on considering we had about 10 last minute cancelations from troops that couldn’t make it. If we had a few more people attend, we could have probably set up a couple more tents, but we’ll try that for Camp Edwards and Collings. Speaking of tents, I got a lead at the show on a free 1934 squad tent for the unit as well as some uniforms/equipment that a local VFW wants to donate. I will keep you posted. We received a lot of good feedback from the public and picked up several names/emails interested new recruits!
I will be sending out a thank you to the Air Force Reserve on our behalf. They were very pleased with our display and I think our troops were very happy with how we were treated compared to other events we do. The only downside was the initial security to get in (Gil-I’m glad you didn’t have to stay in “jail” overnight! ha ha), and the humid weather made for tough camping. I have some ideas of how we could alleviate some of this in the future. At least we had M/Sgt. Titcomb there as an on-call representative to straighten out any problems, a big thanks to him too!
Thanks YD, I can’t stress enough what a commendable job you did this weekend! Please send me comments you have about the show as well as your (10 best) pictures. I will be posting photos to the website soon. Here’s a news article Diane came across where Gil is mentioned (http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2012/08/great_new_england_air_show_at.html). See you at the next event!
On behalf of the Company Commander,
2nd Lt. Jason Volk
B Co, 104th Rgt, 26th Div
