"Jarrett, Mark and I would like to express our gratitude for the warm welcome that we received from the alumni at the annual CAA Beef & Beer Scholarship Event.” states Crossmen Executive Director and Board Chairman, Fred Morrison. “It is a great event for a great cause. For over a dozen years, the Crossmen community has come together to raise money to help defray some of the current members tuition costs.”
This year, the Crossmen Alumni Association, some generous anonymous donors, and Crossmen Productions teamed up to raise more than 300 percent more money distributed to 50 percent more members than past years. It has been a great thing to watch the whole Crossmen community come together to help members with some of their expenses. “We would like to do more for more people as our activity is not getting any less expensive from a participant’s stand point and corps expenses continue to rise. We are on the right track with this improvement in total money distributed and the increase in the number of awards.” remarks Crossmen Alumni Association President, Rick Reedy. Special thanks to Michele Williams for spearheading and ensuring the success of our most important annual function.
Jarrett Lipman, Assistant Corps Director, spoke of the newly instituted Member Assistance Program and announced the award recipients as determined by the awards committee. Fred Morrison spoke of the State of the Crossmen and the challenge to get more of the 2,900 alumni involved. “I know that we can come to the people in this room and get things done,” Morrison said. “You are our strongest supporters. Drum corps, like racecars, are powered by people and money. I challenge each of you to bring two more former Crossmen to this event next year and we will triple our scholarship horsepower,” he concluded. Another challenge issued was to add a second Crossmen Alumni event. “We need more people to step to the plate in order to accomplish this as we really can't expect the same people to do the lion-share of the additional work,” added Reedy.
Mark Chambers, Crossmen Corps Director and Board Vice-President spoke next about the 2007 season and the learning experience it was. “I believe that we gained the knowledge to make improvements in all areas of our 2008 production, Planet X,” said Chambers. “We are a stronger World Class Drum Corps and further along than we were a year ago today,” he continued.
After the guest speakers, event MC, Jack Brenneke, turned the floor over to alumni Ed Carr's entertaining band named “Gangster Whitewalls”. The evening was concluded with the drawing of the events winning tickets. “We had a great time and can't wait to see everyone at history night and on tour,” stated the visiting trio from Texas. Thank you, Alumni Association for hosting another successful and fun event!