February, 2026

Growing Together

The first month of 2026 has flown by very quickly. For the vast majority of us who are retired the question is…..how did we ever find time for Work?

We had a good start to the year in terms of activities. The New Member Breakfast led by Dave Perry was a resounding success. The Trailblazers joint trip with the Fountain Hills Auto club, led by Dave Wingert and Richard Sundene, to the private auto museums was very well attended. The Enhanced Happy Hour, chaired by Jim Skivington and well supported by his Social team and several spouses, had 91 attendees and was enjoyed by everyone.

Bartender certification for new Members and Members whose three-year certificate was expiring in 2026 was completed so we are still able to serve liquid refreshments in 2026!

On a sad note, we lost two Club Members in January: Myron Shogren and Robert Reitz. Please keep them and their families in your thoughts and prayers.

A review of the Club’s financials, led by Dave Langham, confirmed that we have the pricing for our MND at $15 and our two-tiered liquor ticket pricing of $4 and $6 at the correct level and we do not anticipate the need to raise any prices on these items in 2026.

The Board spent some time discussing the Christmas/Holiday Party and we will continue to work this topic through the next two months.

Though not in a Club sponsored Golf League, but in a league that has quite a few Members participating in it, Rich Suhl recorded the first hole-in-one of his golfing career. Congrats to Rick!

Total Membership had a fall-off at the end of the year. If you recall, we finished 2025 with 149 Members. By the time the end of January rolled around and all of the renewals for 2026 were completed we had dropped to 126 Members. Losing twenty Members on a yearly basis is not uncommon but it reinforces the need we have to grow Membership in the Club. I would ask that each one of you make the effort to reach out to friends and neighbors to invite future potential members to MND and to learn more about the Club. The good news is that we have added three new Members this year and are at 129 Members plus we continue to have guests who are interested in joining the Club.

Looking forward in February we have two Regular Happy Hour events scheduled plus another Trailblazer activity to see the Vulture City Ghost Town. Our other activities remain busy as both the Tuesday and Friday golf leagues are getting strong participation, the Poker table looks full every time I see it, Bridge has four tables, Cribbage is being played and lots of Coffee and doughnuts are being consumed.

Thank you for your continued support.

Jim Grahlmann

Club President

January, 2026

A new year, a new focus

First, I want to thank each of you for your support not only for myself in the role of Club President but also for your confidence in the Board of Directors, which has a nice blend of seasoned leaders with two new Board members who are relatively new to the Club.

I think our first focus must be on maintaining and improving the member experience at the Club. This means executing our “normal” activities such as social events, MND, golf events, cards, etc. at a high level that is recognizable by Members and that supports Member participation. It also means that we are open to trying new ideas to improve the Member experience with the dose of realism that says not all of the new ideas will work as intended.

We added approximately 20 new Members in 2025 which got us almost to the target of 150. A great job by Izzy, Tim and the Members who brought in their friends and neighbors as guests and exposed them to The Club. As you know, however, events and people change and we will start off 2026 somewhere closer to 145 Members. So, we have work to do to maintain our focus on increasing our Membership levels.

How do we focus on increasing our Membership levels in a society that appears to be less supportive of our social club model than it was historically? I believe we need a two-pronged approach. One is to continue the tactical work of increasing Membership one candidate at a time based on friends and neighbors we know. This is important to slowly building our Membership levels and offsetting some of the inevitable attrition we will see every year.

The second approach is a bit more strategic in nature. It says, while at the same time focusing on getting the people we know into the Club, how do we get people we have yet to meet and know into the Club. Without losing our identity as a Social Club or altering our bylaws, how do we significantly increase our visibility in the community to people we don’t know and haven’t met yet. This will be one of the topics that I will ask the Board to work on and I will also need help from many of you.

To help with this I am going to put some energy into making sure that we get the input of some of our newest Members into why the joined the Club and what they want to see out of the Club in the future. More on this in the next couple of weeks.

We also need to start thinking about how we are going to maintain this building here on Enterprise Drive. Over the past couple of years, we have experienced some important building maintenance issues on HVAC and plumbing.  We need to get a little more structured on how we think about maintaining this site and need to develop a 3-5 plan on what future actions are required.

Most importantly, we just need to have some fun and good companionship among Members. That is why we joined and it is why we are still here. To that end, we have a busy January already set-up:

-New Member Breakfast (January social event)

-Trail Blazer event (old cars)

-Happy Hour

-Bartender training

-MND, Golf, Poker, Bridge, Coffee and more

I’ll end with “feedback is a gift, no matter how it is given” and in this Club, “always assume positive intent”. Thank you.

Jim Grahlmann

Club President