You will see we are continuing the new section in this newsletter- keeping in touch. If you have news to share, we would love to hear from you. We also are posting on www.comara.org a list of colleagues for whom we have no contact information. Any data you can provide is welcome. If you would like to volunteer for this or another specific project, please let us know by contacting Ellen Hoff at e.hoff@wlpco.com or send us a note with your dues. Webmaster Ron Garlow after months of effort is getting AOL to accept our emails, and we hope to more easily reach those of you who are AOL subscribers.
Ellen Hoff
President, for the COMARA Board
Dick Arndt, Denis Curtin, Irv Dostis, Ron Garlow, Jack Hannon, Ellen Hoff, Bob Kinzie, Walt McKee, Peter Weiss
Details of the meeting, which will be as short as possible and followed by time to get together with appropriate libations, in our next letter. Meanwhile the April 2005 reunion in Washington was a great success; photos courtesy of Paul Schrantz are posted on the website. California folks report they had a very nice dinner on the reunion evening, with good turnout. We're asking them for any photos...
Those of you who had more than twenty years with COMSAT will remember that before COMSAT adopted the post-tax 401(k) system in the mid to late 1980s, COMSAT offered a "Thrift and Savings Plan" to assist its employees in saving for retirement, and the company "matched" some of the contributions made by employees. Contributions that were made by employees to the Thrift and Savings Plan, and the company "match," were "rolled into" the 401(k) Plan when it was created. The normal rule on 401(k)s is that you must begin making withdrawals by age 70 1/2, and those withdrawals are treated as "Ordinary Income" and are taxed at your highest personal tax rate.
But what about withdrawals of the portion of your 401(k) that started in the Thrift and Savings Plan? Those funds were post-tax funds, that is, you'd already paid taxes on them. The general rule in this area is that retirement funds only get taxed once. So you do not need to pay taxes on this segment of your 401(k) when you begin withdrawals!
"Great," you say, "I can take all those Thrift and Savings Plan funds out first, so I won't pay taxes on 401(k) withdrawals for the first year or two!" NOT SO FAST! The rule is that you can only take post-tax money out of your 401(k) in proportion to withdrawals of your pre-tax 401(k) money, so that you don't finish withdrawals of post-tax money until you finish withdrawals of your pre-tax money. There's a nifty little formula for how to do this in all of the annual Tax Guides, like the one published by Lassiter. And you don't seem to be able to count the earnings on this post-tax money. This means that only a small proportion of your mandatory annual withdrawals will be tax-free.
And, you have to have the records to prove the amount of your post-tax contributions. Lockheed Martin does not maintain records on this, so you're on your own. But for someone who participated fully in the Thrift and Savings Plan over the years, you may have $15,000 to $25,000 in post-tax money in your 401(k), so you are going to save thousands in new taxes if you can figure this out and "stay the course."
Good luck!
Jack Hannon, Benefits Chair
Brent Bohne manages the Habitat for Humanity ReStore in Manassas. Store carries lightly used building materials, opened last spring and already has generated enough money to pay for itself and cover the overhead of Prince William's Habitat chapter. See Washington Post article of 21 April 2005 for more.
Scott Chase has taken over as President of the Mobile Satellite Users Association, replacing long-time President Ahmad Ghais. Ahmad is now semi-retired except that he continues as a member of the board, and to teach and consult. [This doesn't sound like retirement to your editor...]
Jack Hannon co-chairs the McLean Interfaith Coalition, which has financed and built one house with Habitat for Humanity and now is working on a second.
Mike Hulley, who has invested significant personal time on preservation of Comsat materials is involved through his wife with the proposal to preserve the Comsat Labs building in Clarksburg. Those with an interest in this proposal can put a letter on file with the Planning Board before July 7
Hale Montgomery, former Dir. Business Promotion, spent time as a volunteer with Habitat for Humanity Intl. on a house build in New Zealand. He reports, When we arrived, the cleared hillside had bare footings for a house, and not much else. In two weeks, a genial group of 11 American volunteers with Habitat for Humanity built a fine 4-bedroom house for a native Maori family and their three beautiful children.
It was hot, hard outdoor work from day one. The ultra violet factor in New Zealand is severe; for a light-skinned person, 20 or 30 minutes unprotected in the sun can land one in the hospital. It was February/March, their late summer, our late winter. Using mostly hand tools ---- hammers, shovels, posthole diggers and a few hand power saws -- and guided by a few experienced Kiwi contractors, we finished the major work of erecting a framed, earthquake-resistant house with garage near Tauranga, on the eastern side of the North Island. Our gathered group of volunteers, six males and five females, ranged from California to Connecticut, and varied more than 50 years in age, from a new Iowa State graduate in his sublime twenties, to me, in the ridiculous seventies. We had to learn Kiwi -- that an electrician is a sparky, drywall is jipboard, siding is cladding, a wooden peg is a pig, a monkeywrench is a spanner, etc.
We lived together in luxury -- the home of the Hunts, a wealthy couple in Mt. Maunganui, two blocks from the Tasman Sea. Terrific beach, nine or ten bedroom house in an upscale area, You left your dirty boots outside, put them back on and buckled on your workbelt at 7:00 a.m. the next day when the vans left for the work site. At the site, church ladies usually provided huge lunches, spread across plywood tables on sawhorses. Not all was work. During R&R on the weekends, we went white rafting on the Kiatuna River over the highest commercially traversed waterfall in the world, ocean kayaking, sled board running on mountain race tracks, dinning in mountaintop cafes reached by gondolas, toured boiling lakes in active geo-thermal areas, etc.
After the Habitat group broke for home -- "haere ra," (Maori for goodbye), I took off freelance for two weeks to tour mostly through the mountainous South Island by plane, bus, boat. But that's another story. They call NZ Downunder, but it really is the tops. The raw natural beauty of the country is awesome.
Recently, Derrick and Tanya Davies, the Maori couple, sent an email saying they had finished painting the interior and were moving in. It's satisfying to feel you worked side-by-side with a fine group of giving Americans and helped leave a permanent structure, home for a family of five, that stands now on a once dusty hillside outside Tauranga, New Zealand. See pictures at: http://www.comara.org/sent/habitat.htm
Walt McKee just returned with 10 other Rockville residents, from a 10 day bicycle tour around Pinneberg in Northern Germany. The Rockville group stayed with host families and were made to feel very welcome as Pinneberg residents led the way and showed them a great time. They also toured the Airbus factory in Hamburg and spent a day visiting Berlin. This trip was part of a Rockville Sister Cities Corporation program set up after WWII to foster relations between US cities and similar size cities in foreign countries. Pinneberg is Rockville's sister city and will celebrate 50 years of this relationship when the Pinneberg people make a similar return visit to Rockville in 2007.
Vasilis Riginos just completed one of his life-long ambitions: a Transatlantic crossing with his sailboat Thetis. During this trip an old high school friend accompanied him. The voyage originated on September 26, 2004 from the Greek island of Samos, in the eastern Aegean, where he has a summerhouse. On October 27, after 1745 nautical miles, they reached Gibraltar. They left the boat there to wait for the optimum time to cross the Atlantic. The trip resumed on January 5, 2005. They followed almost the same route as Columbus. This is the classic west-going sailing route used by the old sailing ships before the age of steam. They stopped in Madeira, Canaries, and Cape Verde. From there it took them 16 days to reach Barbados. After stopping in St. Lucia they left the boat in Martinique on February 26. The total distance of the trip was 5760 nautical miles and they spent 62 days at sea. Details of the trip can be found on Vasilis' sailing web site: www.sy-thetis.org.
Dan Swearingen is a trombone player extraordinaire with the National Concert Band of America. Free concerts will be held July 4 at 11 am at Mount Vernon, and July 24 at 8pm at Lubber Run Park, Arlington, Virginia.
Paul Weeks reports: In 2000 I started attending Open Shop at the Seaport Foundation on Tuesday evenings to satisfy my curiosity about the techniques used to make wooden boats ... ways to make pieces of wood that aren't straight and/or that don't have right angle edges. With my appetite whetted, I moved on to building an 18' motor launch, called a Handy Billy designed by Harry Bryan from Nova Scotia. I worked on the boat at home so I could help my wife through two hip replacements. Two and one half years later I completed the boat and named it "Hip Hip Hooray" in honor of Pam's new hips and my successful completion of the boat. I then started consulting with The Seaport Foundation and later moved to a regular part-time staff position responsible for the administrative matters.
Working for a small non-profit is a challenge and very rewarding. We would be honored to have any of the Comara group volunteer at the Seaport Foundation or get involved in wooden boat building at Open Shop on Tuesday evenings. Contact information: Alexandria Seaport Foundation, 0 Thompson's Alley P.O. Box 25036, Alexandria, VA 22313 703-549-7078 www.alexandriaseaport.org
Volunteer opportunities include:
Daytime:
work in workshop with the apprentices one or more days per week;
Weekend:
build at open shop (Tuesday 7-9pm); provide guidance and support at boat
building events (usually on weekends).
COMSAT historical text materials have been delivered in three lots to John Hopkins in Baltimore for archive and safe keeping, by agreement between John Hopkins and the Foundation. We still need to deal with graphics, artifacts and materials that are sent in periodically by COMSAT veterans.
Hopkins plans to complete their processing of the data by July 15th. The data will then be available to anyone wishing access. A visit may be scheduled between 8:30 AM and 5:00 PM Monday through Friday and on Thursday evenings. Twenty-four hour notice will be required for access to the material and photo ID will be required for entry to the Hopkins library. Completion of a Registration Form will be required on the first visit. Contact Margaret Burri at mburri@jhu.edu for additional details or contact Ed Martin if questions. Ed can be reached at EdMartin752@aol.com
The "Live via Early Bird" DVD is still being distributed and there are about ten left from the first production run of fifty. The film "Via Marisat," a Golden Eagle winner produced by Hale Montgomery, is also still in distribution. Contact Ed Martin to order a copy of either DVD. Other film not yet edited for DVD, includes footage of the Intelsat VI reboost, the Early Bird 25th Anniversary party and the Marisat 20th anniversary party. The amount of interest expressed could hasten plans for production of these videos in DVD format. Contact Ed if interested in this footage.
Renewing members 2005 dues are down to $10!
Please send your check to
COMARA
PO Box 34594
Bethesda, MD 20827
We spend a lot of time chasing down your new email address; it would be a great help if you could confirm the address for us. Visit
http://www.comara.org/
and sign in. You will need either your PIN or previously-entered password.
After a successful sign in, you can change your information after clicking
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You can request a copy of your PIN emailed to the email address
that is in the database.
First click the "Sign In" link.
Then, click the " Send my PIN to my email address " link.
If this doesn't work, ask the webmaster to send it to you.
Send it to webmaster@comara.org
Economical delivery of information (both time and cost) is a continuing problem. Each month, we lose contact with a few more members. We currently use several means for member communications.
There are a several factors that affect reliable email delivery.
Adding your email address to the COMARA yahoo group is simple and provides an additional notification of news that is sent via email and additions to the web site. Notifications will be brief, and will contain a direct link to a web page.
Please fill out the information below or use the online registration form at
http://www.comara.org/home/register.asp.
If you are already registered, you can use this form to provide corrections to
your information.
Then send a check payable to COMARA and this form
(if you didn't use the online form) to
COMARA
PO Box 34594
Bethesda, MD 20827
Name: ________________________________________________________ Spouse: ________________________________________________________ Address: ________________________________________________________ City: _____________________________ ST: ______ ZIP: __________ Country: ________________________________________________________ Email: ____________________________ or ________________________ Telephone: ____________________________ or ________________________ Fax or Cell _______________________________________________________ Year Joined Comsat ________________ Year Left __________________ Do you agree to have the above contact information made available to COMARA members? ___ yes ___ no We would like to know which issues or activities are of particular interest to you as a member of COMARA so that we may better serve you. ___ Retirement benefits ___ Social events ___ Contacting or networking with other members All information provided below will be kept in the strictest confidence and will not be shared with other members: Type of benefit from previous employment with COMSAT: ___ No retirement benefits ___ Receiving medical/dental benefits ___ Insurance or death benefits I am a Vested Pensioner who is ___Currently receiving Benefits __Receive benefits in Future I am a Spousal Pension Beneficiary who is ___Currently receiving Benefits __Receive benefits in Future Other benefits: ___ Deferred Income account ___ Senior Executive Retirement ___ Savings Incentive Plan