The Star Spangled Banner Chapter

COL (Ret) George Stakias, USAR

President’s Message October 2025

As our year ends with our upcoming Annual Meeting in November, I am pleased to announce that I am willing to continue in the role of President (if approved by the membership, of course), as are most of our existing officers, individual service representatives and committee chairpersons, including our Chaplain. We will need a volunteer for The JROTC Chairperson, which we urgently need to fill, especially considering the possible restructuring that Frank Hilsher mentions later in his ROTC/JROTC Notes section. Please consider volunteering for this position which facilitates recognition of our stellar JROTC cadets with deserved leadership MOAA Awards!!! We will also need to elect a new Surviving Spouse Representative, which can be filled by any member or spouse, not necessarily “surviving”. All our other Board members are committed to stay, let’s add this chairperson and representative to make our Board complete! Volunteers????? Call me!

 We have had another splendid year starting off in January with our milestone “60^th Anniversary Celebration” and speaker MG Janeen Birckhead, Adjutant General of the Maryland National Guard. We had two additional dinner meetings in May and September with outstanding and informative speakers, Mrs. Cheryl Glang, MD Council Surviving Spouse Liaison and Glenn Williams, PhD, Military Historian. The SSBC Chapter and Maryland MOAA was represented at the “Our Community Salutes” event in April at the Greektown Square Center with attendance by me, Col (ret) Rita Kurek and the MD Council President, Maj (ret) Cathy Hampton. This event, held yearly, is always an outstanding tribute and send off for our new enlistees joining the military right out of High School. You can find out more about this program and/or donate to this cause at www.ourcommunitysalutes.org.

Increasing our membership is how we will sustain this outstanding Chapter. Please consider inviting a colleague to our next meeting and encouraging them to join our organization. CAPT (ret) Mike DeHaemer did just that and I am happy to welcome new member, BG (ret) Bill Bilo.

We actively encourage you to donate for our noteworthy causes of the paws4vets organization and the ROTC gift of the Army Officer Guides. These donations can be made on our website at www.starspan.org under Chapter Info, drop down “Donations”, or added to any upcoming dinner reservation.

Our major fundraiser for the paws4vets foundation is soon approaching and I encourage every member to attend this very fun event for such a worthy cause and I’m hoping many members once again will sell a table of ten for which you will receive our superb event coin. 

Please see the paws4vets event flyer in the October 2025 newsletter. Tickets will be available at the November Annual Meeting!! SAVE THE DATE!!!

Thank you so much for another great year! Looking forward to seeing you at our next dinner meeting and upcoming events!