President's Message

Colonel Bill LeadyTo the Great Sacramento Post, Society of American Military Engineers:

Wow, 2010-0211 has been another great year for the Sacramento Post. In military terminology we accomplished our mission and are driving on do so again in the upcoming year. It’s a pretty ambitious mission.

"To promote and facilitate engineering support for national security by developing and enhancing relationships and competencies among uniformed services, public-and private-sector engineers and related professionals, and by developing future engineers through outreach and mentoring."

And we’ve met these goals again and again with our superb conferences and forums, our Sustaining Members Forum, our Young Members Forums, our annual Golf Tournament, and our regular monthly meetings. We’ve been so successful in fact, that this past year we’ve been able to award over $43,000 in scholarships to young aspiring future engineers, the most we’ve ever awarded in a single year! (More info on this is included within this newsletter!) Additionally, last summer we sent three Sacramento High School Students to the Army’s, Navy’s and Air Force’s week-long engineering camps and we are repeating that this summer. We also gave $5000 to Math Science Engineering Achievement (MESA), an organization that works with our local High Schools.

It has been a year of growth for the Post. We now have 113 sustain member firms, with 459 Sustaining Member Representatives, the highest number in our history. We also have 214 individual members; that’s great! I need to thank Ms. Vida Wright. She personally has had a lot to do with the success and growth of the Sacramento Post and congratulations to her as she is now serving as the SAME Southwest Region Vice President.

I also need to add a special thanks to our Post Officers who really make the post run. The gift of your time is irreplaceable, without them we really couldn’t accomplish anything. I want to thank every one of you for your extremely hard work and commitment to our post.

The 2011 Water Conference, Managing California’s Water - Solutions Through Outreach and Partnering will be our major event this year. Planning is nearly complete, just the final details remain. It is going to be great and I look forward to seeing you all there this 3-6 October here in Sacramento.

I would like to thank Lieutenant Colonel Andy Kiger for his outstanding leadership and dedication as the Post President for the last year. Finally, I want to thank every one of you for your extremely hard work and commitment to our post. I am committed to serving all of you and the post in accomplishing our objectives over the next year. And I know I can expect the same dedicated commitment from all of you. Thanks again.

Colonel Bill Leady, USACE Sacramento District Commander
Sacramento Post President

The Society of American Military Engineers: formed “in the interest of National Defense… bringing together all phases of U.S. engineering, [in both the] civil sector and military, for the advancement of knowledge…and the rapid mobilization of engineering capabilities.” - Charter of the Society of American Military Engineers, founded in 1920.