Alpha Avengers Newsletter

Alpha Avengers of Vietnam

NEWSLETTER

PO Box 61, Snyder, Texas 78550

Well our search for former members of "A Company, 2/501st, 101st Airborne Division, Viet Nam, 1967-1972 has completed its first phase. We have run over 1000 names through our locating procedure and have actually located over 500 of these men. There were just over 1000 men that served with the Company from 1967 through 1972 that we can find records on. In our second phase, we are starting over on the ones we were unable to locate the first time and do a little more detailed search for them.

If this is the first newsletter you have received, I will briefly attempt to explain our organization to you. We first organized in l990 after locating a few men for a reunion in Washington, D.C. and have since grown to have a roster of 531 former members of our Company. We have had two reunions and we are currently planning our third one to be held in Kansas City, Mo., July 21-23, 1994. We are expecting this reunion to be the largest one yet. We anticipate having over 100 veterans from "A" Company in Kansas City. We know for about 150 of you this is the first you have heard of our group, but we sincerely hope you will be able to attend the reunion on such short notice. At our last reunion in St. Louis, Mo. we had 35 men attending, but we only had located I 10 at that time in 1992. 1 can personally guarantee you will meet someone there you served with over twenty years ago, that is just as eager to meet you. Families are also urged to attend and become a part of our reunion.

Our Association has an annual dues structure of S20.00 payable in July of each year to help locate former members of our group. We do need your support to keep this process operating. Postage costs, locating fees, telephone costs, and printing costs all add up. I urge all of you today to please send in your dues to help locate your former comrades and friends. The Alpha Avengers of Viet Nam Association has a Non- Profit Tax Exempt status from the IRS and recently obtained our Bulk Rate Non-Profit organization postage rate from the Post Office. These items will greatly help our group save on expenses.

For those of you in the Nashville, Tn. area that will not be able to attend our reunion in K. C., the

101st Airborne Association is having their annual reunion, July 6-9, 1994 at the Stouffer Nashville Hotel. 'Mere will be a few of us there. I would invite all of you to this reunion also. Call me for details at 915-573-2194.

The Board of Directors met in Kansas City in August 1993 to decide on our hotel selection and to discuss plans for our upcoming reunion, July 21-23, 1994.

We selected the Kansas City Airport Hilton as they presented the best overall proposal for our group. Their locations as well as their competitive rates were the deciding factors for our decision. Since that time they have changed their name to Doubletree Inn. The director of sales assured us that nothing other than the name changed. He is the person that we negotiated with originally.

We booked a block of 150 rooms for our group. We will need your input as to how many of you will be attending the reunion. This information is vital to us for planning, due to the increased number of members that we have found since our last @on. We want this reunion to go off as smoothly as our last two have, but we have increased our membership fromllOmento53O. About a third of our members attended our last reunion in St. Louis. If the same percentages hold true we will be dose on our room block reservation. We want to assure each of you that there will be rooms available, but we definitely need your input if you think you will be attending. Take time and return the questionnaire to me this week if you think there's only a possibility you will be attending. I can't express the importance of this enough. You will also need to call in your hotel reservation to the hotel as soon as possible.

This reunion we are looking into having a BBQ picnic instead of going on a tour of the city. We feel that we can do this at less cost to everyone as well as affording members to decide what sights they might like to individually take in while in Kansas City. There is a lake about 15 minutes from the hotel that has pavilions and facilities for groups like ours that we are currently checking on for this event. Kansas City is well known for it's BBQ and we have spoken with one of the best caterers in the area about putting this function on. It will be a day of fun at the lake with horseshoes, volleyball, and any other activities we can get together!

Our tentative schedule for this reunion at the present time will be: registration and hospitality room Thursday, July 21: BBQ picnic Friday, July 22: hospitality room and free time for everyone as well as the evening banquet Saturday, July 23. Our banquet buffet will be $16.00 per person / kids under 12, $8.00 per person.

We sincerely hope each of you will attempt to make this reunion the best ever by attending and joining in the camaraderie that we all experienced over twenty years ago.