Last update: 06-Jan-2012

2012 Dues
Dues for 2012 are $15. You can view your dues status in the line just above this paragraph after you sign in. (If you forgot your PIN, you can have it sent to your email by clicking the link on the Sign In page.) Your dues payments are used to for expenses of the organization.

The dues status has been updated for 2012. After you Sign In, you can view the registration information, your dues payment history, and the status by clicking the "Edit My Profile" link found to the left. You can update your contact information using this page. If you have any questions about your dues status, please email treasurer@comara.org. If you have any problems with sign in or any part of the web site, please email webmaster@comara.org.

Cold War-era Earth station for sale
Features include sweeping views and the ability to withstand a 5-megaton nuclear blast.
Tue, Jan 3, 2012 - KSBW - Monterey   Ever wanted your own nuclear bomb-proof space station on the Central Coast? You're in luck. -- Watch the video.

Note from Webmaster: I received an email from Ed Martin Dec 22 advising of the funeral for Sid Metzger. Unfortunately, our web hosting company made an unannouced change between Dec 19 and Dec 22 to the mail component of the server that prevented sending emails to our members Thursday evening. This problem was fixed on Dec 27. [12/27/2011]

SIDNEY METZGER
On Thursday, December 22, 2011 SIDNEY METZGER of Silver Spring, MD.

Funeral services were held on Friday, December 23, 1 p.m. at the HINES-RINALDI FUNERAL HOME, 11800 New Hampshire Ave., Silver Spring, MD. Interment King David Memorial Gardens, Falls Church, VA.
Washington Post Notice

COMARA-IRA Night at Strathmore 2012 - March 24, 2012

National Philharmonic: All Mozart

The INTELSAT Retirees Association and COMARA have plans for a festive all Mozart concert by the National Philharmonic Orchestra at the Strathmore Music Center, near White Flint in North Bethesda, Maryland, on Saturday, March 24, 2012, at 8 p.m. See the announcement at COMARA-IRA Night at Strathmore 2012 for full details.

We are featuring seats in two areas:
Orchestra seats at $48.80 each, and Grand Tier (2nd balcony) at $36.00 each.
Both of these represent a 20% discount off Strathmore's prices.
Seating will be arranged on a first come, first served basis.
Pick up tickets the night of the concert next to the ticket office. Please indicate any special seating requests. Complimentary parking offered. We will once again have access to the VIP Lounge, a favorite in years past, both before the concert and at intermission.

Make your checks payable to "IRA" and send by Friday, February 24, 2012 to
Intelsat Retirees Association
c/o Nedda Krowitz
3210 N Leisure World Boulevard - #705
Silver Spring, Maryland 20906

Address questions to members@comara.org

First Wednesday in December 2011 Photos

We had a good turnout for the First Wednesday in December 2011 at Roys Place on December 7. Ron Johnson, as usual, had everything set for a good reunion.

We have some photos from the event. Your webmaster is trying a new site to initially post the photos. The photos currently available have been uploaded to a photo album in the webmaster's SkyDrive account. There are 29 photos currently in the album. If you have some photos you took at the event, please send them to webmaster@comara.org so they can be added to the album.

You can view the photo album from: First Wednesday in December 2011 Photos. A number of the people in the photos have been identified. There may be mistakes, and there a number of people that still need to be identified. If you recognize someone who is not identified, please send a brief email to webmaster@comara.org. As you browse the photos, the right pane will tell you "photo - of 29". Just include the number.

This use of the SkyDrive photo album is an experiment. Let the webmaster know what you think of this format and site.

Thanks to Paul Schrantz and Ron Garlow for the photos. [Ron planned to take more pictures, but the camera battery was drained before he had time to take all the planned pictures.]

Class of 2011 Directors

The COMARA Bylaws (see COMARA Bylaws for a copy) state that the Board consist of nine elected Directors. This year, three Directors were elected for a three-year term by aclamation. The Directors in the Class of 2011 are:

• Joe Pelton,
• Denis Curtin,
• Bob Kinzie.

Joe Pelton will continue as President.
Maury will continue as Secretary and Vice President.

COMSAT Legacy Materials Return

A sister organization, the Comsat Legacy Foundation (CLF), was formed and headed by Ed Martin. Lockheed Martin transferred a large number of items of COMSAT items to CLF. Some of these items considered to be of value to historians to Johns Hopkins University and George Washington University. Ownership of the rest of the documents was then transferred to the COMARA organization, and these documents were originally housed in Clarksburg. Steve Teller and several volunteers, e.g. Mike Hulley, took on the task of making many of these documents viewable from a web site hosted by IOTSystems. A few years ago, the Clarksburg space was no longer available and the documents were moved to a new facility for IOTSystems in Williamsport. This facility became unavailable some months ago as a result of the recession and other unfortunate events.

Thanks to a lot of work by Paul Schrantz, Steve Struharik, and Ron Johnson, we were given access to the materials in Williamsport. David Lee provided a truck and several helpers to move the items to a facility he leases in Gaithersburg. The are 78 boxes of items and filled the truck. So, these items are once again available in this area (Gaithersburg).

The computer and scanner used to make electronic versions of many of the documents is now in the hands of the webmaster. We will make many document available from the comara.org web site in the coming months. This will all take some time - please be patient. These will be added to the Legacy section of the comara.org web site. The first of these documents are oral histories from the COMSAT History Project. This section still need a bit of work, but you can now peruse the documents. These are Adobe Acrobat [pdf format] documents. If your browser is configured to display a pdf document in a browser window, you can easily view the documents. If not, your browser will let you save each one on your computer, and you can then view the interview using Adobe Reader [free].

We will soon be adding other publications and a number of photos. This will take several months to get everything uploaded to the web site.