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Letter from the Chairman -
2012
The year is 2012 and the Phoenix Society
is still providing a “Mutual Admiration Society”
organization for the former and present employees of one
of the most important US Federal Government Intelligence
agencies since it’s formation after WW II (60 years
ago). We all owe thanks to the Phoenix staff lead by
Beverly Orders and to the many volunteers that provide
their time and efforts to the various activities, that
range from the mass mailings; to the travel
opportunities; Phoenix related publications; and the
computer support that provides the Society’s Web site
and it’s information. This dedication is the type that
always made “our place” a reflection of the people.
The “people” whether active or retired will always be
our strength.
This year brings with it
new challenges that we as a society have to deal with,
in deciding how many changes can we accept, join or
ignore in order to continue to be viable in the future.
First, is a proposal to become
more closely associated with the National Cryptologic
Museum Foundation. There are potential future
advantages in that when a new museum is built, we could
have office spaces and not have to worry about our
tenant status in the classified spaces of NSA, as we do
today. The Foundation has an IRS tax exemption that we
may be able to take advantage of, at some point in time.
We would become members of the Foundation yet remain as
an independent “Phoenix”, associated organization.
Second, is the consideration of
whether or not we, as an organization, join one of the
social medias, e.g. Facebook. The National
Cryptologic Museum has already established their web
site on Facebook. NSA has a web site open to the
public. How far are we willing to go? Are we ready to be
that public? A lot of us were “brought up” not
ever admitting “who” we really worked for. There
are members, today, that still have a hard time buying
“things” in the museum or NSA gift shops that have NSA
stamped/engraved all over them. Yet, there are many of
us that are on Facebook as individuals, in many
instances, communicating with each other. This year at
our annual luncheon we are going to have a member of the
NSA Security Office brief us on the pros and cons of
joining a media like Facebook. We will communicate
to everyone what we understand the pros and cons to be.
Third, how do we make our web site
more of “the” center of activities? We receive a lot of
complaints about the near daily obituary notices of the
passing of retired employees, as if that is all “many
members” see from the Phoenix Society. The problem
we face is that we receive almost as many “thank you”
from the relatives of the retiree. In many cases,
the relatives do not know the NSA people that their
family member knew and worked with over the years.
Reports are that the family receives condolences from
many people that they did not know or did not know how
to contact. How do we use our web site to handle the
announcement of the obituaries and still be timely? We
need a reasonable solution to both sides of the
“problem”.
Fourth, in the past the
people of our organization always returned to Maryland
at the end of their “away from NSA” tours.
Maryland is still the largest population of retirees.
But we believe it’s time to acknowledge large groups in
places like Denver Colorado, Augusta/ Ft Gordon Georgia,
San Antonia, Texas and Hawaii. The eastern shore
of Maryland already has their own Phoenix
luncheon. We believe it would be to everyone’s advantage
if retirees would self organize in different areas where
the population permits. We could “Skype” board
meeting and discuss mutually agreed upon subjects and
ideas, etc. Like the rest of the organization,
volunteers will be needed to start and continue.
After 60 years of members, we are
a group of very different “time cultures”. In the
beginning it was all analogue and the people were silent
about who they were. Today it is all digital and
open who they/we are. We have many common bonds
underlying who were/are even though we worked in
different times. The success of our work and the
security that we have lived in has been the same. Most
of us have always known that we were “different”.
Security about what we did/lived and who we were, came
naturally after a time. Being “proud” and “silent” was
not hard when we all acted the same way and as a result
we developed our own social circles. The strength of our
organization has always been the people. Those
same people staying in contact in retirement should be
just as easy and natural. We, as an organization,
need to grow in numbers and adjust to the times.
We welcome all correspondence on
the above subjects and any other ideas to make us more
active with more of our own kind.
William (Bill) Black
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