Chartered

It’s been a long, 2-year battle with National, but things finally got straightened out. The word had come in – our Legion Riders chapter were going to be officially chartered!

(Granted, we’ve ‘existed’ for a while now, along with many other ALR groups across the state, but none of those groups – ourselves included – had received official recognition from National. That has changed, and the charters are starting to flow in.)

Perhaps due to the wrangling and wrestling we’ve done over the past two years paid off – as it turns out, ours was the first chapter in Mass to be chartered. Not bad at all!

We’d receive the special piece of parchment during the Massachusetts regional state meeting. The temps weren’t too bad, so a number of us had rolled the iron steeds out of the garages to help portray our presence at the meeting.

As it turned out, our section of the ceremony wound up being tucked into the middle of a very involved…and very lengthy, big meeting.  We wound up standing in the foyer, listening and observing the proceedings, as the minutes ticked by.  After about an hour, I’d had enough and mosey’d my way downstairs.  Yes, to the bar.  A nice gentleman was standing there, so I asked if I could get a beer.  He smiled, said they weren’t open for another 90 minutes, but sure, why not.  He gave me a nice cold bottle, and I gave him a nice piece of green paper.  The poor guy had to then go find someone to make change for me, because the register hadn’t been cashed yet.  But he was in good spirits, and very welcoming, so all was good.

I finished my beer and headed back upstairs.  The nice guy must have ambled off, though, because a little while later, when a couple of the other guys headed down stairs to get a beer, this is what they found waiting for them…

Anyway, we managed to whittle the time away until it was finally time for our moment in the spotlight. We were announced, voted on, approved, and then called in to accept our charter. They took some pics of us all gathered around…it was pretty cool. As we were filing back out, though, a good number of these dignitaries were coming up and applauding, shaking our hands, thanking us, congratulating us. It was kinda surreal, but ok, they seemed to appreciate what we’d done, so all was good.

From there, we headed back to our own Post and bellied up for a bit. Despite a lot of standing around and waiting, it had still been a great day. Now we just need to get the Charter framed and mounted…which in turn has led to discussions of cleaning and painting our display room. Meh, it’s all good.

Ride Hard, Get Chartered!