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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2020-09-23-TCC-min Town Celebrations Committee Meeting Minutes September 23, 2020 Virtual Meeting Members Present June Baer, Chair; Glen Bassett, Suzanne Caton, Wei Ding, Linda Dixon, Mary Hutton, Cerise Jalelian, Gresh Lattimore, Sondra Lucente, Lorain Marquis, Bill Mix, Geetha Padaki, Rita Pandey, Sandy Podgorski, Sue Stering Guest: Gina Rada Members Not Present Kim Coburn, Steve Cole, Karen Gaughan, Julie Miller, Wayne Miller, Ashley Rooney, Sam Zales Business: • June convened the meeting at 7:06 pm and read the Town notice regarding the conduct of public virtual meetings. • The committee approved the minutes of September 9, 2020. • June reported on the results of her presentation to the Select Board on 9/14/2020: o The Board approved cancelling the annual Veterans Breakfast and the annual Veterans Day Parade and program. o The Board approved the plan to send food gift cards to Lexington veterans in lieu of the breakfast. o The Board approved the plan to do a video presentation about Veterans Day and Lexington vets in particular. o The Board approved the plan to purchase a large banner to be hung across Mass Ave honoring our veterans. Car Parade for Veterans on November 11, 2020: • June noted that a car parade for Vets has been proposed and the committee voted to move forward with plans for the parade. • Actions already taken by the Veterans Day TCC working group toward organizing a parade include: o Contact with the Lexington Police has been made and the Police are on board with the idea. The Police will liaise with the Fire Department. o Doug Lucente has agreed to be in the parade as the representative of the Select Board. o Emails have been sent to all the veterans' email addresses that the committee has to inform then about the parade. The committee has asked that responses from veterans wishing to participate in the parade be received by 9/30/20. o Since several addresses bounced back, the committee discussed how to resend the bounced emails. • June noted that no parade route has been decided on because the working group is waiting to learn how many vets are interested in participating. • Other ideas suggested for the parade included providing flags for the vets' cars, and including some classic cars in the parade as an additional draw for viewers. • Gina Rada told the committee that the Town's Veterans Services Department has an account with W.B. Mason and suggested that using that account to order flags might be a quick way to obtain the flags since there was some concern about being able to get the flags quickly enough. • June reported that Jim Shaw, editor of The Colonial Times magazine, agreed to put information about the parade and also the gift cards in the next edition of the magazine. • Sue Stering reported that she had spoken to someone from a Veterans' motorcycle group about participating in the parade. The committee agreed that they should be allowed to participate and asked Sue to follow up. • June noted that, once the decision to have the parade is made, the TCC will have to do a lot of publicizing of the event to ensure that it is well attended. Gift Cards for Veterans: • June reported that she has spoken to the owner of one of the Dunkin Donuts stores in Lexington about buying approximately 150 gift cards. The owner offered a $200 donation to the TCC to be applied toward the gift cards. • June also reported that the Lexington Rotary Club has offered a $750 donation toward buying the gift cards. • The committee discussed whether gift cards should be sent to actively deployed military and the decision was to limit the cards to only veterans, not active military. • The committee also discussed whether to include Bedford veterans in the gift cards since they were included in the annual Breakfasts in the past. The decision was to limit the gift cards to Lexington residents only. • Bill Mix will send a list of Lexington Minute Men who are veterans and live in Lexington to June. Virtual Veterans Day Program: • Mary Hutton reported that the video will include the unveiling of the World War II memorial plaque in Cary Hall. She asked who should be the contact for arranging that issue. • Essays about Veterans Day by Lexington High School students have been solicited and 2 of the essays will be included in the video. The schedule for the essays calls for them to be submitted to teachers by October 16 and to the TCC by October 26. • The MC for the video will be Sheila Widnall, former Secretary of the Air Force. She will make the opening remarks, intros to the sections of the video, and possibly speak about female leaders in the military. • Mary asked for volunteers to select snippets from the interviews of WWII vets already made, to be included in the TCC video. Several committee members volunteered and Mary will follow up with them. • Mary noted that Lex Media has agreed to work with the TCC on the video. Honoring Veterans Banner: • June noted that we need to put in the request to the Town Manager's Office to hang the banner a month before. She has the needed paperwork. • Sondra asked for ideas from the committee for the design of the banner. • Glen asked Gina if there are any regulations about using the military services' emblems on the banner. Gina agreed to investigate and let Sondra know. The meeting adjourned at 8:16 p.m. Next meetings: 10/7, 10/14, 10/21, 10/28 Respectfully submitted, Suzanne Caton, Secretary