[Jon18]

Bear in mind that these are my words, and I'm not representing the board's viewpoints here.

That said...

A question for you to ponder...Why the hell would someone say they could do a better job than Leo when they didn't have a plan in place to keep things going and grow the organization? You saw yourself what happened after he left. Do you think we wanted to give ourselves this reputation or ruin our relationship with members? What do you take us for, a bunch of fools? What I have heard over and over again is that Leo wanted out, and I know he still keeps in touch with members of the board and is more than willing to put in his two cents. In fact we received an email from him reviewing the last issue. I for one would love to have him back. Why don't you ask him to come back and lead? See what his response is and then let us know. If he wanted to come back there would be no argument here. If he says that he was forced out by people who said they could do better, then you'll have me eating crow and I'll be more than happy to come on this forum and apologize to you. Until then, I'd have to be a complete moron to dismiss the claims of people I know and work with to side with someone who has an unsubstantiated claim from an unnamed source.

Your guilt statement makes no sense. I didn't come on here insulting the hard work of others. I simply said that within the current board, there is no proof to back up your claim. Perhaps you found my words abrasive, but I'm sick and tired of people spreading lies and gossip with absolutely no proof whatsoever. Everything is hearsay. Perhaps board members who have since resigned subscribed to your claim, but since I work with the people within the current board, I know that is not the case with them. If it was I'd have no problem telling you. However, I'm not going to stand by here and let lies and accusations fly around without coming on here and nipping them in the bud. The problem is that there are several people on these forums that want nothing more than to gossip about people without offering a single encouraging word or suggestion as to how and fix things. So I ask you, what would you do in our situation?

Tell you there's no money? THERE'S NO MONEY. Our financial problems were published in the last issue and have been posted on our website for months. We cannot offer new subscriptions and collect money from people when we can't get the issues out on time, or even assure the survival of the organization. That would be completely unfair. Unfortunately there are many outstanding subscriptions (including my own) that are hanging in the air, and I want to work to fix that. I want you to be happy, and I want the members to be happy, but as I said before: I cannot do everything on my own.
Just because I subscribe to certain views doesn't mean that I can force them on the rest of the board. I need their support as well.

As far as being straight with everyone, I believe there has been a complete lack of communication between the board as a whole and the members. I've been complaining about this and I'm trying to pitch ideas to keep everyone informed so you don't have to come on these threads asking what's going on. That's unfair to you and reflects badly on us. However, I believe one of the problems has been indecisiveness among the board as to handling this situation. We don't want to tell you one thing and then do another. As a board we completely suck at communication and I'm not ashamed to admit it. I'm sincerely sorry for our lack of communication and for losing your trust. We've asked for a lot of patience from our members and we've failed on many fronts, but I'm still hoping we can fix things so WW1 Aero, Inc. continues into the future.