Dear Redd Family,
What a blessing it was to read about one of our own dear ancestors, Solomon Chamberlain, in the April First Presidency message of the Ensign by President Dieter F. Uchtdorf! I hope you all have had a chance to read it. Sure made me proud. And how about the recent novel released this spring: Undaunted, which heralds the courage and faith of many Redds. Again, we have a great heritage!
In order to help you understand where I fit: my mother is Jacqueline Redd, daughter of Parley Redd who was the ninth child of Lemuel Hardison Redd and Sariah Louisa Chamberlain. I live in Salt Lake City, near Ensign Peak. The blood in my veins runs ‘redd’; I am so proud to be a part of this organization!
I humbly approach this opportunity to help lead the Redd Family Organization for the next two years. I have some questions that maybe you can help me answer in more depth: Why do we exist? What are we about? What are we hoping to accomplish? These answers and others can be found in the objectives set out in our bylaws:
Section 1. The objectives of this Organization shall be to promote, strengthen, and perpetuate the common bond of the Redd family through social, research, recreational and spiritual activities.
Section 2. To seek out and encourage those individual descendants of Redd heritage to become active participants in the Organization and its purposes and goals.
Those purposes as stated above are broad and daunting and certainly can’t be accomplished by one or even several of us. We must all help and all must pull together in order to accomplish these. Moreover, even many of us could not accomplish all of those goals in a lifetime. But, we can accomplish some of them and I propose that we set out to accomplish a few high-priority, meaningful and impactful goals over the course of the next two years. I’m hereby soliciting your help in determining a course of action that would be most meaningful. Here are some ideas I have and I welcome any ideas you have:
1. Recruit More Members. We have a great start on this one, but how wonderful it would be to actively identify more members–particularly those of the next generations. I’m 57, and while that’s not ancient, I’m no spring chicken. We must begin now to add more Redd family members to our mailing list and family organization membership. My own Redd mother is now 81 has over 400 first cousins; many of them, of course, have graduated to the other side. But, their descendants have not and we must find them! I believe we are barely scratching the surface of potential members.
2. A Reunion! This is a huge undertaking, I understand. But how wonderful it would be to put together even a “park pavilion” reunion by the summer of 2011! And what a great way to connect with many new members.
3. Quarterly Membership Meetings. We can do this. How great it would be to have regularly scheduled quarterly membership meetings where we can all receive updates on research, renew friendships, and share inspiring stories of our Redd ancestry.
So, those are just a few ideas. I think you can see how these three objectives really are symbiotic with each other, i.e., as we work on one, we’ll simultaneously make progress on the others.
I welcome your input for more ideas. I also welcome your offers to help in any way you think consistent with the objectives form our bylaws as stated above.
As printed in the program from the 1956 Redd Family Reunion: “Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend, Before we too into the Dust decend.” –Omar Khayyam
Optimistically,
Gordon Wilson
