From The Chair
Executive Director Shari Bedker and her staff, sprang into action to mitigate, and virtually eliminate, the adverse financial impacts of the decision that circumstances forced upon us. Since Monday March 9 was the deadline to cancel reservations at the Grand Hyatt without penalty, Shari promptly transmitted the email blast we had prepared in advance but hoped never to send, announcing the cancellation to all of our Fellows who had registered. She then set about the more difficult part: approaching individually the hotel, Induction Ceremony venue, restaurants, and multiple vendors with whom we had contractual or other commitments
The positive response on all levels was nothing short of astounding. We are humbled and grateful to those many Fellows who, anticipating a financial loss to the College that could have run to almost $200,000, stepped up voluntarily with the offer to donate their prepaid registration fees. We also are enormously grateful to the Grand Hyatt, Smithsonian, and all of our restaurants and other venue and tour partners who so willingly offered to refund our deposits, release us from our obligations, or roll those arrangements to 2021 or 2023 (recall here that our 2022 Annual Meeting will be in Denver). Through their graciousness and cooperation, as announced in a further email blast on April 2, we are able to issue a refund of the prepaid registration fee to every Fellow who did not decline it by on or before April 17.
What About All the Events? The financial disaster having been averted, we turn next to consideration of what to do about the events we were forced to cancel. With the cooperation of our Directors we were able to hold our Board meeting telephonically on March 13 as scheduled, and I thank all of our devoted Board members for their attendance and participation.
After careful consideration of the cost and logistics involved in moving some or all of the other events to our Fall Meeting in San Diego, we have decided as follows:
• The Class 31 Induction Ceremony will be combined with that of Class 32 at the Annual Meeting in Washington next Spring, at our favored venue of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, within walking distance from our hotel and meeting site. Pending their official induction we will extend to the Class 31 Fellows all of the rights and privileges of membership, and were delighted to conduct a telephonic orientation meeting for them back on March 25.
• The presentation of our Distinguished Service Award to our longtime friend and College Counsel Bill Perlstein will be the featured event at the Fellows Luncheon in San Diego on October 14, 2021. We remain in frequent contact with the Hon. Laurel M. Isicoff, our Fellow who serves as President of the NCBJ, to confirm that at least for now their 94th Annual Conference remains on the calendar, and expect to follow suit with our related College meetings and events including the Luncheon. It remains unsettled whether Bill and his presenter, our illustrious former Chair and President Mike Cook, will agree to attend in tuxedo, but one way or the other we are proud to honor Bill by presenting the Award and turning the keynote presentation at the Luncheon over to the two of them.
• We have been working closely with our Scholar in Residence, Prof. Susan Block-Lieb, who in turn is working with all of our distinguished panelists, to reschedule and possibly reformat the Educational Programs into a series of podcasts, webinars or other remote
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