I’ve been associated with the Birmingham Big Orange Club for about 7 years now. Some of the first meetings I went to were held at a local cafeteria style restaurant were you go through the food line, get your dinner and find your way back to the facility’s “meeting room”. After the meeting were they showed a video replay of game highlights as the guest speaker we opted to skip a few meetings. I was at that same meeting I mentioned I had been working on the club’s website. The person who had been taking care of it moved out of state. It was difficult to mange where it had been “hosted” so I moved it over to my server and got it the domain name bigimingham.bigorangeclub.com. At the time I bought bigorangeclub.com I thought there were more Big Orange Club’s out there and was looking to be able to offer them hosting too. I later came to find out that the University of Tennessee shut down all the other BOC’s because of the booster situations they were causing. Somehow this one in Birmingham was hanging on by a thread.
I had managed to get my email address on the club’s mailing list, so I was getting notices of upcoming meetings. We attended a few more meetings. In the Spring of 2003 the meeting were being held in a the back end of a dark, dank bar and grill. I think they kept it dark so you could see the food you were eating. Maybe they thought you wouldn’t notice the pool they used for jello wrestling or maybe the fact that only 12 people were in attendance.
It was at the last meeting of the season that new officers were being elected. A financial advisor, Dale Carnegie instructor and real outgoing type of guy volunteered for the vice-president’s job. The vice-president job to is secure quality guest speakers for each meeting. The vice-president is also the president-elect. So after one term the vice-president moves into the president’s position. The current secretary/treasurer was ready to step down. I’m not really sure how long he had held the position, he had been the secretary for as long as I had been a member. Since I had already been doing the website for a while, I volunteered, was nominated and elected into the position.
The president-elect not only worked to get us great speakers, he got a us a better meeting location. We held the 2003 Fall Kickoff at Johnny Ray’s BBQ at the Colonnade and had a great turnout. In the fall of 2004 the president-elect became the present. A new VP was elected and said I would stay on as secretary/treasurer/webmaster.
I kept the website updated and had been using a mass mailing application to send out the newsletter. I was well aware of the CAN-SPAM act and our mailing list had grown to over 500 people since the president got involved with it. We added email addresses of local alumni members. Somehow I became the secretary/treasurer of the local UT Alumni chapter. I even got to attend the summer training session of chapter officers.
We kept the meetings going strong with great guest speakers and good turnouts. Pat Summit, Phil Fulmer, Trooper Taylor, even the University president Mike Hamilton and the SEC Commissioner Mike Slive.
By the Spring of 2006 I was getting tired of handling the 3-in-1 position. I came to find out I could not sign checks or handle the bank statements because I was not an alumni. I would get to every meeting that I could get to early to help set up and get name tags ready. I would still be the one to collect the money at the door for dinner at each meeting. Jeff would in turn deposit the money in the bank for me. He was working right across the street from a branch of the bank. On a couple of occasions I had asked Jeff to cover for me at meetings – he was pretty much on his own when he did.
Although I say “I” to all of this Jeff would always try to be there at the same time I got there unless it was one of the meetings where we started setting up at 3PM. He was pretty much the only person helping me collect money, pass out name tags and door prize tickets. We were always the last to eat and sometimes with no place to sit.
The president who was key in turning the club around decided it was time to step down. He held the position for 2 years 2004 & 2005. When he stepped down, I felt it was a good time for me to also. Even after all the work I had done, I still couldn’t shake the “outsider” feeling. Most of the long time club members are also alumni. Things had been turned around, the club still had it’s core group of members that could always be counted on. And now Jeff & I could enjoy the meetings as members if we wanted to. I would still handle the website and get the newsletter out.
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