I thought today would be a good day for you to receive a message from your new president of EWGS. Welcome to all who have subscribed to the EWGS mail list and I hope that all the members of the Society who are on computers will join us. It is going to be an awesome way to communicate. For all you who were brave enough to attend the EWGS January Luncheon at Mukagawa, I salute you and name you "Brave Persons". Even though, the outside scenery was beautiful, it can be very hazardous so I was delighted that over 120 of you "Brave Persons" arrived safely and to those, who decided not to chance it, you missed a super day! You were missed. Our speaker, Dr. Linda Lawrence Hunt, did a superb job of reviewing her publication "Bold Spirit - Helga Estby's Forgotten Walk". She was educational, entertaining and certainly held our interest so that I, for one, did not want her to stop. A fascinating, courageous women, Helga might have explained that some of our own genealogical brick walls could be stories that were perhaps silenced in our own families. Linda, the wife of Dr. Jim Hunt, is also a history professor at Whitworth College and we have been honored to have both of them speak to us now. For those of you who did not attend, you should know EWGS now has two more Distinguished Service Award members. Dottie Braithwait, EWGS genealogy library assistants chairman, who has a long resume with EWGS, was one of them. Many of you may not know that Dottie is the designer of the EWGS logo that you see on the BULLETIN, stationary, publications and anything that EWGS puts out. We might forget how often a logo is shown - maybe around the world. Dottie drew one that has lasted down through the years. Of course, that was not her only accomplishment but a very important one. Another announced Distinguished Service Award member was Charles Hansen. You read today on the EWGS mail list just some of the different jobs that Charles does for thousands of other genealogist by being web-master of many other lists. We are so fortunate to have him in our society. Plus I can claim him as a cousin on our SWOPE line (along with claiming Linda Wilke as another cousin on that line also) Charles just goes along doing his research job for the society without any fanfare as well as changing his hat when he writes the many articles and then again as he masters the various mail lists and web sites. Toss all that in and then know that during tax season, he is up to his eyeballs in clients and their taxes. CONGRATULATIONS TO BOTH DOTTIE AND CHARLES! (yes, I mean to shout it from rooftops!) When I told Charles a couple years ago to keep on searching for a German line, I mean that for every member of EWGS. As Donna Potter Phillips told us, the census says that almost all citizens have some Germanic anestry. That of course, means, not just in Germany, but also in any country that has a germanic language. There are way too many for me to list - and I might forget one. SO - this all just means that we need to take advantage of the German lecturer/researcher, Sabine Schleichert, who will be coming from her home in Muenchen, Germany via Salt Lake City to be with us for our June meeting. This will be June 5th 2004, in the library auditorium and this will be our June meeting. We will all brown bag it as it will be an all-day seminar. I can tell you that you will get very tired of hearing me repeat this but my job is to impress upon you how important this event will be. The goal of EWGS is to E-D-U-C-A-T-E the membership. It truly does not matter whether you actually know at this time, IF you have a German in your ancestry. By attending this meeting/seminar, you will be able to find ways to discover the German, or most importantly, what to do when you find one. So just bear with me. I know this is a long email today but also want to tell you that Doris Woodward announced the winners of the Essay Contest at the luncheon. The 3rd prize of $25.00 went to Fran Wicht (who also proofreads the Bulleting for Doris, an invaluable job), 2nd prize of $50.00 went to Nancy Wright, a new member from Colville and the 1st prize of $100.00 went to Marshall Shore. These prizes are for them to purchase material from Genealogical Publishing Company. Congratulations to all, along with all the Honorable Mentions that were also announced. It was wonderful so many to participate in this year's contest. As our speaker, Dr. Hunt, said - you are all contributing to history by writing about your families for all to see. Don't forget to write a letter to the editors about Bev Vorpahl's column, "Heritage Hunting". We must help make the powers-to-be learn how important this genealogical column is to all of us. Send them to <editor@spokane.net>. Have a great week and happy hunting to each of you. Bette Butcher Topp President, EWGS -- The new email address is now: toppline@comcast.net************ *****Hope you will visit my homepage: http://home.comcast.net/~toppline/homepage.htm You can find my ahnentafel chart at http://home.comcast.net/~toppline/antafl.htm