Banner Comes Home to Connecticut

by Amanda Meeker,
VP-Membership,
BAH Toastmasters (Club 91)
McLean, Virginia

Imagine getting a chance to become a detective like Sherlock Holmes. Imagine going on a scavenger hunt like Indiana Jones. Imagine being put on an unexpected mission within Toastmasters to find the home for a lost banner. Imagine going on a scavenger hunt to dig up details. This article details findings from when someone did just that. Findings include the history of the club and the banner, how the banner’s club has changed, and the club today.

Background

For this particular banner, the search began backwards. The banner was found, but the home of the banner was not. A friend of a Toastmasters officer, who was a former member of Toastmasters, still had an old club banner in his basement that was forgotten for many years. The banner said, “Aetna Middletown Toastmasters Club (Club 5908) from Middletown, Connecticut.” However, this name is no longer in existence on Toastmasters International’s Web site. There is now Aetna Speaks Up (Club 3610) in Hartford, Cromwell Community Toastmasters (Club 5908) in Cromwell, and Middlesex County Toastmasters in Middletown (Club 8340). There is no Aetna Middletown Toastmasters Club (Club 5908) in Middletown, Connecticut. The officer sent an email message out to all three clubs on Toastmasters International’s Web site, and the club president of BAH Toastmasters in Virginia, James “Jim” Heeren, sent an e-mail message to his contacts from District 53. After making two phone calls, first to the Aetna club and then to Joseph “Joe” Lenart, a two-time president and webmaster of Cromwell Community Toastmasters and a member of both Cromwell Community Toastmasters and Aetna Speak Up!, the home was found.

History of the Club

Before there was the Aetna Middletown Toastmasters Club, there was Aetna Hartford Toastmasters, now Aetna Speaks Up! (Club 3610), in Hartford, Connecticut, which was founded in the early 1970s. A new $170 million Aetna building opened in 1983 because Aetna’s business and membership was growing beyond the capacity of the company’s Headquarters building in Hartford, Connecticut. Members of Aetna Hartford Toastmasters were transferred to the new building, but as traffic between Hartford and Connecticut can often make the trip take close to an hour prior to the start of meetings, those who lived closer to Middletown met on June 20, 1985 to commission a new club that would meet in Special Function Room 1 on the 3^rd floor of the Middletown building. Thus, the Aetna Middletown Toastmasters Club in Middletown, Connecticut, in District 53 began. It was formed as an open club with 20-40% of the members external to Aetna. There were initially 29 members, including Sandra “Sandy” Bassett, the club’s first Treasurer and Secretary, who is still a member of the club today.

They were mostly all beginner speakers. After Marnie St. Claire, Karen Sullivan took office to become president. (Ms. Sullivan has since moved to Buffalo, New York, and the club has lost contact with her.) Over the years, the club’s number would “wax and wane,” growing at some points to near 40 members and decreasing occasionally to as few as 12 members. By the early 1990s, there were about 12-13 people in this club, with 8 members in regular attendance. There were essentially, “no lumps in the log.”

There are many reasons why people join Toastmasters besides to improve speaking skills. For example, people may join for the following reasons: to have fun, to improve English skills (or other language skills), to do something together with friends, to improve professional skills at the manager’s suggestion, etc. What made this particular club unique was its meeting organization and unspoken rules. The organization of most monthly meetings went like this: Announcements, Table Topics, Prepared Speeches, and Evaluations. The unspoken rules were “Don’t say, ‘Thank you’ at the end of a speech” and “Don’t raise your glass if someone toasts you.”

History of the Banner

In the early 1990s, the original banner was left behind at a Regional Conference before e-mail became commonplace and a non-officer was asked to store it. The club lacked a permanent and secure location to store its equipment at the time, so the banner was kept in a storage locker offsite. Times were tough, people’s lives changed, and people forgot about the banner because they had a replacement banner as a back-up. Aetna went through three rounds of lay-offs around that time, so some of the members had to find new jobs, and without e-mail it was difficult to retain club cohesiveness. This particular banner became worldly in a short amount of time and has been in four different storage lockers (in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Central Virginia, and Northern Virginia) and a studio apartment. Fortunately, the club found a permanent and secure location to store its equipment, in a closet attached to the meeting room that used to be a utility room.

How the Club Has Changed

Around December 2007, Aetna decided not to renew the 25-year lease of the Middletown building, which it sold to GE Capital in the mid-1980s, and opted instead to renovate and expand its facilities in Hartford, Connecticut. In 2008, President Joe Lenart began collecting opinions from the club’s membership as to what direction the club should take since the building would no longer be available to the club. He asked membership if a merger of Aetna Hartford Toastmasters and Aetna Middletown Toastmasters was desirable. In a vote held in March 2009 there was roughly an even split between those who wanted to reform a community club in the Middletown/Cromwell area and those who wanted to merge with Aetna Hartford Toastmasters so they decided to do both. In May or June of 2009 half of the members transferred their membership to Aetna Hartford Toastmasters (had they remained, then the club would have met Distinguished Club status that year). In early September 2009 the remaining club members, consisting mainly of non-Aetna members, found a location to meet under new President William Sullivan because the original building was being dismantled and is still set for demolishment. However, they continued to conduct their last three meetings in the Middletown facility, “finishing the era with a bang” according to the following schedule:

• Humorous and Evaluation Speech Club Contest (September 15, 2009)
• Final meeting (September 29, 2010)
• Humorous and Evaluation Area C-5 Contest (September 30, 2009)

In September 30, 2009 the club renamed itself into Cromwell Community Toastmasters, and on Tuesday, October 13, 2009, the club met for the first time as Cromwell Community Toastmasters in Room 224/225 of the Cromwell Town Hall in historic Cromwell, Connecticut, under President William Sullivan.

The Clubs Today

The club continued to grow in “numbers and cohesion,” and with the decision to meet at a later start time of 5:15PM to accommodate members with longer commutes and later work schedules, swelled back up to 26 members, including Brian Fleming, who also happens to be the longest standing member since 1992 besides Sandy Bassett.

The club has hosted multiple Area and Division speech contests, speech-a-thons, and currently holds Select Distinguished status. The club has had the following Distinguished Club Program distinctions over the past 25 years:

• Presidential Distinguished (2 times)
• Select Distinguished (3 times)
• Recently 2006–2007 and 2009–2010
• Distinguished (8 times)
• Recently 2004–2005, 2005–2006, and 2007–2008.

They recently celebrated their 25th anniversary with a speech-a-thon featuring many Area Toastmasters dignitaries and contest winners.

Going Forward

Cromwell Community Toastmasters meets every other Tuesday from 5:15 PM to 7 PM and has a “thriving and active” membership and Mentoring Program. On December 7^th, the club held an Area speech-a-thon to help them and members of other sister clubs achieve their individual and club goals by January 20, 2011 at Cromwell Town Hall.

When the banner returns, it will be honored by a ceremony to celebrate its arrival to its rightful home. BAH Toastmasters would like to extend an offer to make Cromwell Community Toastmasters an honorable sister club.

Tips

• The lesson learned from all of this is not to have the club tied too much to the company, because when people are no longer a part of the company, neither are their resources.
• A club must keep in mind the changes that members, sponsoring companies, and clubs undergo over time. This is true for any club anywhere in the world.

Author Biography

Amanda Meeker is the VP, Membership, from BAH Toastmasters (Club 91) from McLean, Virginia. Amanda Meeker has been in BAH Toastmasters since January 2009. She is now the Vice President of Membership, but she used to be Sergeant at Arms. She became a member because she heard positive things about being in Toastmasters from her 6th grade teacher and father. She works at Booz Allen Hamilton as a Technical Writer.

Sources:

Meeker, Amanda. Phone Interview with Joseph P. Lenart. Virginia. 19 November 2010.

Meeker, Amanda. Interview with Anonymous. Interview. Virginia. 15 November 2010.

Club 5908 Distinguished and Select Distinguished. 3 December 2010.

Toastmasters International. Charter Membership Roster and Mailing List. 20 June 1985.

Toastmasters International. Club and Officer Information. 20 June 1985.