Action Center

President's Message

Learning the Ropes
June, 2012

Dear League Members...

I had never bothered keeping a detailed calendar. A one-inch square in a regular diary was always enough to remind me to pick up dry-cleaning, get the oil in my car changed and to go for medical checkups. When I retired after spending more than 50 years working in newsrooms on three continents, first as a reporter and then as an editor bossing people around, I braced myself for long periods of nothingness.

But that was before I joined the League of Women Voters of Orange County and met a human dynamo called Deirdre Macnab, who was local chair before becoming the state president. "Could you help out?" Deirdre would ask in her typically warm and expectant way. Or there would be an email saying: "This is something we might want to pursue." Within weeks I was going to meetings, writing stories for The Voter and reports on hearings I attended as part of the Observer Corps. I stocked up on reporters' notebooks and pens.

I learned a new language with the help of Caroline Emmons-Schramm. Suffragists not Suffragettes. Program isn't about an event. It is in Leaguespeak the LWV's basis for both advocacy and education efforts. One of the best assignments was helping Hot Topics chair Andrea Kobrin lineup panelists for the monthly luncheons. During two decades in the Orlando Sentinel's newsroom I had never met as many movers and shakers.

But best of all was getting the chance to chat with other members as we waited in line for lunch or shared a table. My daily calendar now fills a page. The other week included a LWVOC board meeting, a bank renaming ceremony, a local government committee meeting, an hour-long conference call and a luncheon at which former U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy spoke. (I have no illusions that I would have been invited if I wasn't representing the LWVOC.) It was great to share a table with nine other League members.

I'm also working on our Facebook page. Check it out at Facebook.com/LWVOC.

We want to expand our reach. That is what the League is all about. Reaching out to strangers, friends, people in power, out of power, hoping to be in power, the wise, the profound, the kind-hearted and the interesting.

Ann

Ann Hellmuth
President
LWVOC

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