Pictures of this meeting here

Greetings to all,

The following is a brief description of the TRMA's third annual
meeting. This writing will be posted on the main site, as well as be
sent out as a newsletter to all of our members.

This year the TRMA meeting was held at the Ramada Inn in Burr Ridge,
Illinois, just outside of Chicago. The Hotel staff was fantastic, and
they did a terrific job taking care of our attendees and guests.

As is the norm with every yearly TRMA meeting, the room was filled with
tables featuring displays, plans, and memorabilia. Doug May brought
brochures from a number of hobby manufacturers as well as his completed
1/570th Titanic model enclosed in a display case made by George Stein of
B & C Plastic, Inc. Jerry Davidson brought samples of the full line of
photo-etch sheets for the Titanic from Tom's Modelworks, and Mark Darrah
displayed copies of the original Welin Davit plans. Brian Disney was
once again is attendance with his highly detailed and fully illuminated
Southampton diorama. George Stein brought a number of great-looking
display cases that he makes at B & C Plastic Inc. and Dan Reed
introduced the members to his 1/144 Titanic hull and fittings for the
first time in real life. Many of the members had only seen pictures,
and to be able to see the immensity and detail of the hull was
awe-inspiring. I brought a number of my Titanic and Olympic photographs
as well as a piece of Olympic wood.

Every year we cover the walls of the meeting room with copies of
original H&W construction plans. It is not unusual for the casual
observer to be greeted with a Captain Smith picture on the exterior of
the main door with the infamous words "Be British" looming overhead.

We had 25 attendees at the meeting; which was not bad considering the
higher price of admission incurred by opening the room early to
accommodate the presentations.

The meeting officially started June 29, 2002 at about 2:00 p.m. in the
afternoon. We started with a series of presentations. Our first special
guest was George Stein of Wisconsin, owner of B & C Plastic Inc. He
brought along several of his products, including ship model display
cases, and his clear computer cases. His display cases are made with
hardwood bases and the acrylic plastic is of exceptional quality. All
of the display cases were magnificent! George's presentation was very
interesting and it generated a lot of audience questions as to the
usefulness of his products for displaying both home-built and
professionally built models. His display cases are very competitively
priced and useful for many display applications. We hope to see him
again next year.

The second presenter was our own Dan Reed of Denver Colorado. Many of
you know
about Dan's one-of-a-kind 1/144th scale Titanic hull and cast resin
pieces. Dan's presentation was very informative since many of us did not
know exactly how he made his castings, how well they were selling, or
what he planned on doing in the future. Dan Reed's offerings do not
just qualify for the term "model" as they are truly intended for
producing realistic "miniatures" at the large scale size of 1/144. He
offers the hull, complete with sidelights, doors, and molded-in shell
plates. He also offers the four funnels, brass sternpost, and cast-resin
lifeboats. According to Dan, he will be producing the ventilators
soon, and he will produce other pieces as the need arises. Believe it or
not, he has sold over 60 of these large-scale 1/144 hulls and accessory
pieces. Dan is a pleasure to have on board.

Ray Lepien was also in attendance. He is in the middle stages of
building one of the large 1/144 models. He was instrumental in
explaining the pros and cons of turning the 1/144 hull into a realistic
miniature of our beloved ship. Ray brought along photos, which showed
his progress on the model.

On a side note, Ray has been working with Tom from Tom's Modelworks in
producing photo-etched railings and other miscellaneous parts for the
1/144th semi-kit. These parts, along with the brass sheets already
offered by Robert Hahn, which include all of the windows, make this
1/144 kit a great project. 1/144th scale produces a large model with
room for small details of which we would all be proud to show.

The final speaker before dinner was our very own trustee Roy Mengot. I
have never heard Roy speak in a public forum before, but when I did, I
found him to be quite captivating. He spoke of the "ice grounding"
theories, and the predicted disintegration of the wreck. He also spoke
about current happenings with the wreck expeditions. You had to be there
to truly appreciate his knowledge on this subject. Needless to say, he
fielded many questions by our attendees.

Dinner commenced at about 6:30 p.m. Because of our presentations going
on in the main gallery, the party had to relocate to a secondary room.
Here we held the appropriate memoriam to those lost on the Titanic, and
raised a glass of Guinness to the fine Irish who built her. We commenced
with delicious family-style dinner. During dinner we had dual monitors
running in the back of the room with Titanic wreck footage playing over
the soundtrack of the Cameron movie. This video offering has turned into
a tradition and we hope to do it each year.

Our guest of honor spoke after dinner. David Huff, president of
Minicraft Models was our highlight speaker. He is very interested in the
TRMA, and he was very open to our suggestions on improving the Minicraft
model. He spoke of the history of the model, the change of hands from Al
Trendle to himself, and he addressed the future of Minicraft and the
model industry in general.

David mentioned that there will be some visible changes coming to the
model, and some of us in the TRMA will be involved in implementing
these. It was a genuine pleasure to have David as our guest, and by the
time he left for the evening, we felt like he had been involved with the
TRMA for years. He seemed like one of us, pretty much a "regular guy".
Unfortunately we weren't able to convince him to make an Olympic model,
but another well-known ocean liner may be produced in the future. David
listened to our suggestions with an open mind, and he wrote our
suggestions on a note pad for future reference.

Shortly after Mr. Huff ended his presentation with a question and answer
session, we commenced with a raffle. Among the items were autographed
copies of Simon Mill's book "Olympic the Old Reliable", a picture of
the Titanic signed by survivor Millvina Dean, a complete set of
photo-etched parts donated by Tom's Modelworks, a deluxe Minicraft
Titanic model donated by David Huff, a display case from George Stein of
B&C Plastic Inc., and a set of Minicraft's new historic jet aircraft
models. Tom's Modelworks also donated some sets of his new photoetch
steamer chairs to be handed out for free, and we thank Tom for this
generous gift to our attendees.

Towards the end of the evening, the last presentation was given by yours
truly. This talk was intended to be very informative as it consisted of
facts not widely known about the first of the Olympic class liners. The
talk actually brought out a few laughs as I read aloud opinions of the
Olympic as written by someone outside of the White Star circle.

After everyone adjourned, we had the customary trustee meeting. Though
our non-U.S. trustees were not able to be present, a majority of us were
in attendance. We decided it was not necessary to make any major
association changes at this time, so we decided to leave things as they
are on our web page. However, there will be more emphasis given to the
technical aspects of the Titanic, with plans of putting together a
"quick reference guide" for modelers. We hope to include photographic
enlargements for those frequently questioned areas of the ship. This
will take some time to put together, so it may not be available for a
while.

My only regret is not having had more time to speak with each attendee
individually. As I set up the event, I found myself running around
attending to so many details. But I was able to spend time with David
Huff, as he had as many questions for me, as I had for him. During the
meeting, I was only able to spend a few minutes with Jerry Davidson and
Larry Jibson, two people I really wanted to talk to one-on-one. Thank
God for telephones.

We do not know if next years' meeting will be held in Chicago. It seems
to be a toss-up between Michigan and Illinois, so we will have to wait
and see.

Until next year,

Bruce Beveridge