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Re: AGA memorial fund for Vicki Costley

Well, at first I sort of went with Scott, but now I think I go with Kathy's point. The fact is Vicki wasn't an AGA member. That doesn't make her a bad person, but it does make it awkward for the AGA to administrate this award.
I mean, isn't that a major driving force behind this whole discussion? Why on earth would anyone ask us to do this when she had no connection to AGA? Makes no sense.
So I vote to keep the last paragraph in. Because I am obsessive/compulsive and cannot help myself, I edited the letter; take what you will and leave the rest. 


Hello Lana,

Thanks for your proposal, and I apologize for not writing back sooner.

We have discussed your proposal very thoroughly on the AGA board this
week. It speaks highly of you that you wish to honor the memory of your friend; it seems like every year we've lost some really great people in the hobby. Just a few months ago, for instance, Merrill Cohen passed on. Merrill was an amazing long-term contributor to both the AGA and to the hobby in general, between his hardware innovations when he owned Aquarium Products, to his encouragement of aquatic gardening in general as part of the AGA Management Committee. Last year we lost Peter Lewis, and before that Al Castro.
Unfortunately, while the thought is good, there are several practical difficulties with the AGA taking on this task as a recurring 
event. First, the AGA has limited resources, both monetarily and
(more important) in personnel to manage such things. Many questions
must be answered for such a fund: What is the purpose (other than to
honor Vicki)? Who is chosen to receive it, and why? Who insures that
this is taken care of each year? These are very difficult questions and we do not believe that our answers to them would be better than yours!
Second, $25 is a relatively small amount of money. We suggest that to pool the money and make a large one-time donation to a charitable or conservation organization would do more good in Vicki's name, rather than spreading it thin across an award given out for many years.
Finally, while we do not doubt her contributions to the planted tank community, she was not a member of the AGA. We do not think it would be fitting for an organization of which she was not a part to oversee this award. We think that if AB was the place where she was honored, it would be much more meaningful to those who remember her.
We hope that you understand our position and will accept our most sincere condolences. 

Best Regards,

  - Erik



Kathy Olson wrote:


okay, just read scott's emails too, good points, not sure what to do now.

On Fri, 5 Dec 2003, Kathy Olson wrote:
I actually liked the last paragraph, because if she is NOT an AGA member, it wouldn't be an appropriate place for it anyways. I think sometimes they do honor member, like the GUY JORDAN fund in the ACA, but those are REALLY INCREDIBLE people. 
just my 2 cents worth.

Kathy


On Fri, 5 Dec 2003, Erik Olson wrote:



On Fri, 5 Dec 2003, S. Hieber wrote:



I still like stating the practical difficulty of chosing
any one person to honor, given that we couldn't do prizes
for them all or even many. It suggests that we are not
rejecting Vicki in particular but rejecting singling out
everyone.


This is what I implicitly tried to state in the first paragraph, because I
thought if I explicitly stated anything then it would get read as
either, "Hey, there's too many people who've died -- to be fair, we should
just honor NONE of them instead of one of them."  ... or alternatively ...
"Hey, lots of people have died, but there's more important ones to honor." Both of these statements really suck, and are really NOT appropriate to say. Remember the circus that ensued on one of the lists where someone first suggested a moment of silence... and it rapidly grew into a whole "obit" section for the convention (not unlike what has happened this week here), and then someone else suggested we should then do nothing for anyone, and yet another person came down like a ton of bricks on that thought for being beaurocratic and inhumane. 
I much preferred to leave that aspect ambiguous and just note that we've
had good friends die too & let them draw their own conclusions.
So you're probably right -- I will take out the last paragraph or at least mutate it. 

 - Erik




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--
Cheryl Rogers, Membership
Aquatic Gardeners Association
http://www.aquatic-gardeners.org

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