hey all, first time posting on the guild forum!

i've had some personal corruspondence concerning recent events and just wanted to pass this along. this guild has some roots in the carvingpost and i do too.

i was fortunate to have attended the very first guild board meeting, seven years ago in Ridgway. it was held in an attorneys office (David Pontzer) to make it all legal. what an exciting day!

there have been many people along the way that spend time, and continue to work towards a common goal. but for me it all comes back to one person that see's the big picture. these board transitions and internal conflicts will get resolved and pass. stay focused on the future and goals. look back, but don't stare...

so here's the man, bill plant. he traveled the country for over a decade to meet every chainsaw carver he could. bill was my friend, he was everybod's friend and knew more carvers than most of us put together. in all the years i've known him he never had a negative word to say about anybody,, not even one. This picture was from his last time at the rendezvous

Thanks Joe for a little reminder of some history. Please come back again and tell us more.

Bill was a special man. That's why he was the first winner of the Bill Plant Lifetime Achievment Award. We had hoped to have a 2'nd winner at the next Vous.

Thanks Joe,
Some of us have tried to follow in Bills footsteps. He certainly had a lot of integrity.
Have a nice day,
Jerry

BILL PLANT (Login MARINE53)


Response to Voting and Meetings
And hopefully learning. One thing about all of this is The 'UCCG" can take notes and try not to make so many blunders. The Board of Directors are a hard working Group of Members of the "UCCG", and they have been getting all the Vote-ing done in order to present everything to the Members at the Rendezvous at Ridgway, We do know that most of the plans will have to be Voted on through the Newsletter, and this Forum.
We also know that things won't work out perfectly all the time, and we will have to start slow, but correctley. We are building a strong foundation, and
we have some really good "UCCG" members waitting in the wings to take over in case a Board Member wants to leave for some reason. We have Two International Board members, and I have asked a few people from the West Coast to please stand By for the time when we will need them as a Board Member. The Board we have right now has gone through the By-Laws from cover to cover and we have only had to make a few changes to fit our situcation. Again we have put a Ballot in the Newsletter, and already we have received some Votes.
We are very lucky to have the West Coast Guild as a learning tool for our Guild. Please keep talking and we will keep listening.


SEE YOU AT RIDGWAY2003,
"THE CHAINSAW CARVERS RENDEZVOUS CAPITAL OF THE WORLD"
BILL PLANT

You and I are in total agreement on this one. I think Bill would be disappointed. He really believed in the possibility of the UCCG doing great things for carvers. It still can. Unlike you, I must confess that I did hear Bill express negative feelings about other carvers. It was in a very specific area. As best I recall it, he didn't want to be president of the guild any more because people were bitching about how the guild hadn't made their dreams come true and seemed to hold him as president responsible. Or at least he felt that way. It's the only thing I can recall him sounding that way about. It’s hard to see the Marine as sensitive, but it hurt him.

Damn, I miss him. I wonder if Ed Meyer would untertake to archive (on behalf of the UCCG with full but nonexclusive rights) a bunch of Bill Plant pictures if I undertook to find them all in the many gigabytes of carving pics I have? It would probably be a worthy undertaking. Hey Ed?

Bill's speech when asked to talk about the UCCG at the Fall Carving Festival was
"Join the Guild!" (he's holding files, not a microphone <LOL>)




Hey, Did y'all know that Bill had taken a course in drawing cartoons? He advised me and demonstrated when I did this for my uncle who was retiring:



If anyone is interested, I can probably find the one he did that day, too.

Hats, I would be honored to work on putting something together. I agree that it would be a shame for carvers to lose the memory of such a great carver advocate.

Was a Saint! The patron Saint of Chainsaw carvers. He chastised me once and I listened. I usually have a hard time with authority figures but never with Wild Bill. He always spoke with honesty and a caring attitude toward all carvers. There will never be another Bill Plant. Doc