From President Doug Fee

This month I'd like to use this space to bring you up to date on some of our organizations current activities, and to send out kudos to one of our own. Don Wolfe is a guy who is doing double-duty for the Auburn Aviation Association. Not only is he our Vice-President, but he's also serving as our Scholarship Chairman. He has a long history of, and a passion for, mentoring young people who are pursuing their interest in aviation. It's a fairly regular event around the Auburn Airport to see him taking one of our scholarship recipients flying in his shiny Citabria to help hone their skills in a taildragger, or aerobatics, or some other area where help is needed. Now, as Scholarship Chairman, he is taking the opportunity to lead us in some new directions with that program. He is spearheading a drive to update our record keeping and to move much of our data to digital on-line storage. This will provide for significantly wider and more convenient access to all of our information. It will also give us better long term continuity. Ten years from now, when we want to know what scholarships we gave out in 2019, the information will be conveniently available with no more that a quick search of our database. I find this entrance into the digital era to be very promising for us. Another area where he has been re-thinking our Scholarship program relates to how we fund it. As many of you know, historically, a big portion of our funding came from our holding of the Auburn Air Fair. And while most of us would love to see the Air Fair continue, it's such a massive event to organize that we've had trouble coming up with adequate volunteer leadership to make it happen. So Don has been researching and trying to bring to fruition an old idea of our establishing an endowment that would become a permanent source of funding for our scholarships. It's a complicated endeavor that would most likely take a few years to phase in, but I also see promise in that. You'll probably be hearing more about the idea of an Auburn Aviation Association endowment in the months to come. Aside from his passion for mentoring, Don is a very energetic guy who is brimming with ideas, as well as a willingness to pursue them. So yes, coming into office, he has really "hit the ground running". Two thumbs up to Don Wolfe. Blue skies, Doug