Kenneth Cheung's Alpha Phi Omega Universe

The 65th Anniversary Report
Part 2: Preparations

        With such important event looming, one would think that those anticipating it would take years to prepare it. Not in this case. I took the task of heading the 65th Anniversary Committee because there was no one else who wanted to do it. I did not mind taking up the task. I guaranteed my participation in this event since the Spring 2004 Semester. I simply needed to prepare for the amount of sleep and study time that I would lose preparing for the Anniversary. With that in mind, I set out to work.
        My number one priority as Alumni Secretary was to inform the alumni of the 65th Anniversary. I did what I was supposed to do through email, phone, and postal mail to make sure that they know that Gamma Beta still cares. I also contacted alumni from other chapters, as stated in my job description. 
        As the chair of the 65th Anniversary Committee, I had to utilize leadership in bringing a group of people together to complete various tasks. Each person helped me with their unique position to accomplish this. Richwood Borja was the co-chairperson. He basically came up with ideas and instructed people to implement them. Since he was good at graphic design (as was his major) he designed to official 65th Anniversary logo, which we used for everything related to the event. He designed the program.
        Another important participant was Sharon Cadag, for she provided help with invitations and mailings, organized ideas, ordered the food and went shopping to pick it up, ordered the projector and DVD player, and much more. She was doing a lot of things that would not be apparent to others, but I acknowledge it.
        Nyram Tiv was the head of the layout/Decorations group. The most senior member of the committee, she learned about this event since Fall 2002 and was anxious to have it ever since. She was very creative in creating the favors, which were cute little drawstring bags with the little 65th Anniversary logo on it. Inside was filled with irresistible gourmet chocolate. She also hade an influx of great ideas to commemorate the event, as she was very experienced.
        An important supplier of the event was Jose Barney Duran. He stored much of the A Phi O items that we wanted to display: composites, letters, ceremonial supplies, and scrapbooks. I also asked him to order out official 65th Anniversary t-shirt, which, I admit, took longer than I thought but I assure that those who ordered will receive it. 
        The Historian Mike Huen did his usual Historian tasks, and helped collect and preserve the chapter scrapbooks. He collected pictures from the past and present. He collaborated with me to come up with a visual display to commemorate the event.
In addition to the others, the Sgt.-At-Arms helped locate some chapter memorabilia. Will Thater picked up the mail. Reed Musselman made the time capsule from his workplace at Stanford and provided a large supply of envelopes.
        These are other people who contributed to the event and worth noting:
Long Huynh for advice and layout and publication of the newsletter.
Jen Lin and Hope Nguyen for making copies of the Gamma Betan: Alumni Edition.
Julie Chou for general support and decorating.
Phi Tran for providing "spiritual support."
Ken Pau for helping me with invitations and envelopes in a moment's notice.
Eugene Wong for invitation and email distribution
Robert Peeks for establishing and updating th Gamma Beta Alumni database to allow us to contact alumni. 
Dwayne Hearn for guidance.
Huong Nguyen and Vashti Sinigayan for jumpstarting the locality.
Vornchar Lee for making the Banquet video and providing. technical and camera support for the 65th Anniversary Commemorative video.
Victor Chan for calling alumni.
All the alumni who gave contributions, monetary and spiritual to this event
        With all this preparation underway, I still had to account for uncertainties. For example, because I changed the date, I knew were going to be less people than originally because I could not communicate with everyone we contacted previously. We used many stamps in our first wave of invitations. Those people who sent an RSVP back I notified them by postal or electronic mail. If they paid for a reservation, I issued refunds out of my account to compensate them. Unfortunately, I did not receive one person's RSVP and that person showed up on the original date and appeared at Agenda believing there was an event on Saturday. If you know anyone else like that, then please let me know I will send an apology to them.
Another thing that may be unknown information was that I used Northside Community Center, the place where senior citizens eat, play and dance the day away, as a backup location for the event. I told the managers of the original date and they noted it, but I never filed the paperwork to hold the fulfill the actual request. I gave one employee the new invitation with the December 6 date, but failed to make sure that they erased the December 4 date from the calendar. Thus on the Saturday of December 4, the manager of Northside Community Center called me expecting me to come. I later walked to Northside to apologize, but they were fine with it because they were working anyway. 
        I ordered a banner from the A.S. Print Shop earlier to commemorate the event. The banner cost $100 and was over 40 inches long. Printed on it was the official logo made by Richwood (it was his idea). We wanted everyone who attended the event to sign it.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Photo Gallery by Andrew Phan:

02.09.2005