Dinner Dance
Our annual dinner dance was held this past month. A very enjoyable time was had by all those who attended. Attendance was higher than we initially predicted, and that is excellent. We will shoot for even greater numbers next year.

There was an excellent dinner, and some fabulous raffle prizes given away. I hope all those who participated plan on returning next year, and I especially hope those of you who missed out, will be there for the next one. If you were not there, please ask around of those who were and see if they do not highly recommend it. We hope to continually build on the numbers and make it a truly talked about event.

Remember, this event is for you, the members, and as such, there were no speeches or political activity (nor do we plan on having those added to future events). It was just us folks who work together on a daily basis, getting together for a little fun and relaxation.

Legal Defense
As previously promised, the revised Legal Defense Plan manual has now been approved and will soon be published and made available to the members. There will be further updates in the magazine and on the website about the distribution of the manual. Again the plan was not rewritten, rather the manual was updated to reflect changes that have taken place to the plan over the years.

Training was held this past month for LDF reps at the office of Bobbitt, Pinckard, and Fields, our LDF attorneys. While we had a good turnout over all, we would have liked to have seen more new reps. We are still actively recruiting members to be legal defense representatives. If there is enough interest, we can have another training session this year. Please contact the office, or me, if you are interested in becoming an LDF rep.

Chaplain Program
In an ongoing effort to provide more services to members, the DSA will be more actively involved with the department’s Chaplaincy Program. When the office staff is notified of an event where it appears appropriate, they will contact the chaplain assigned to that member’s station or facility. We recognize there will be many times when someone from the member’s own command will have already notified the appropriate chaplain. This will just be an additional check to make sure no one slips through the cracks. Of course, the chaplains are always available to department members and can now be contacted both through the DSA or through the employee’s work location.

Until next month, take care. 