For the August chapter dinner meeting, the kitchen crew served up a scrumptious meal of meatloaf, red potatoes, three bean salad, and assorted homemade desserts. President Chris Ferguson is shown below swearing in the oath of office to chapter officers and board members; after which Vice President Shawn Bailes swore in Chris as President for anther term in office as well. You can review the current list of officers, board members, and committee chairs at https://sniwla.org/sniwla/leadership-2026-2027/ and https://sniwla.org/sniwla/committees/, respectively.
David Perdue, Scholarship Chair, is shown here presenting a $1,000 scholarship award to Katie Gallahorn who is pursuing a civil engineering degree at Virginia Tech. She talked to us about her studies and of engineering workshops in which she participated.
Afterwards, our guest speaker for the evening, Byron Carmean, gave a presentation on “Super Unusal Trees” that he has encountered throughout his many decades of volunteer work in tracking down the very biggest trees on the east cost, by participating in the Virginia Big Trees and National Champion Trees programs. He explained that there are very specific criteria for each separate species of tree that involves a point system comprising girth, height, and crown spread. These criteria are not equally weighted, with girth having the most impact on total points, Byron clarified. Interestingly, Virginia has the largest number of registered biggest trees across all tree species than any other state, Byron added. Recently, a young man with some technical savvy in aerial surveillance techniques using Google Earth, Eagle View, etc. has joined Byron’s group to help in the hunt for locating yet more big trees. For more information on the Virginia Big Tree program and the National Chamption Tree program, see https://ext.vt.edu/natural-resources/big-tree.html and also https://nationalchampiontree.org/, respectively.
Jeane Carmine informed our chapter members that she represents the Suffolk Parks and Trails Alliance. They are focused on park beautification, trail maintenance, fund raising, and are actively soliciting donations and volunteers to help out with activities that they support such as the annual Suffolk Festival of Lights. Jeane informed us that a local sculptor Mike Irwin has created an approximately 5 foot tall statue of a peanut in the shell, with the goal being to raise donations in order to place one of these in each of Suffolk’s boroughs including the downtown area.
Board Member Darden Langston reminded chapter members to purchase tickets to sell for the upcoming September BBQ fundraiser. He also invited members to contact him if they are interested in volunteering to participate in the upcoming Oakland Church food pantry effort scheduled for September 26th where over 10,000 individual meals, over the course of just 4 hours, will be packed into containers and loaded into a trailer truck for subsequent delivery to those in need who can’t feed themselves. Also, he handed out a flyer with regards to QPR (Question, Persuade, Refer) GateKeeper training volunteer opportunities.
Board Member/Park Manager Jimmy Fanny reminded members that a park cleanup is scheduled for September 5th.
