I just got back in town too late after attending the annual SIR meeting in Lafayette on August 26, 2025, to get my Big Sir Report into last month’s newsletter, so I am spending some extra effort in this report to tell about that meeting. This was my first in-person statewide SIR meeting, and II expected the usual, boring, organizational business meeting, but instead found myself learning much, some of which I would like to share here. First, I was glad to hear headquarters recognize that the branches often feel ignored in decision-making. They formed the Branch Advisory Committee, of which our Roger Stuart is a member, to help have better two-way communication between branches and headquarters. They have also started sending a statewide newsletter to the Big Sir, Little Sir and Secretary of each branch. I guess I was supposed to share that. Sorry. Not surprisingly, we spent much of the time dealing with bringing in new members. We took one small, but in my opinion important step to help in that regard. In today’s economy, men in their 70’s and 80’s may still work on occasion, but still be essentially retired. We unanimously amended the Articles of In corporation of SIR, Inc. to eliminate the word “retired,” but retain everything else to make it clear that we are an organization of senior men who had careers that are behind them. I did not know that SIR had a geographic restriction to northern California and areas of Nevada around Lake Tahoe. The founders placed this restriction because they wanted an organization where the branches were close enough to allow every branch representative to attend the annual meeting. We now have some former members who moved to southern California, but miss SIR. Now that we can hold meetings via Zoom, that geographic restriction seems unnecessary, so we unanimously voted to amend the By-Laws to eliminate that restriction. We also had presentations and discussions regarding the state of marketing, computer/technology, new management tools, training, changed policies and the treasurer’s report. I will discuss these more at our forthcoming BEC meeting, so I won’t need to bore you with details here. Our last meeting, on September 9, made me proud to be a SIR. Mayor Dyer spoke, and our members who dressed in red to set forth our displeasure with the City’s decision to shut down all or a portion of Airways golf course conducted themselves respectfully and, in my opinion, effectively. Bravo to Ed Dorn who presented the case for Airways quite well, and to everyone else who spoke on the subject. I don’t expect quite the same drama this month when our speaker will tell us about Break the Barriers and all the good work they do. I look forward to seeing you at our next meeting on October 14.
John Eleazarian Big Sir
