Volunteer Spotlight: Cheryl Westfall

WP-ORG (a.k.a. West Point Org) has two full time employees. In order to accomplish all that we do, the heavy lifting must be performed by a small army of volunteers. One of the most dedicated and energetic is Chery Westfall, co-moderator of WP-ORG’s plebe-net and parent-forum discussion and dissemination lists.

Born and raised in Iowa, Cheryl and Jeff, Cheryl’s husband of 42 years, make their home in Phoenix, Arizona. Cheryl is retired from an 18 year position in an Elementary School Health Office.

Cheryl says the following about her family and its association with the military and WP-ORG:

“I signed up for Plebe-net in the summer of 1999 when our son entered West Point.  As my husband went on a 3 week business trip at the beginning of Beast [Barracks], this became my life line.  Over the years  I found myself answering more and more of the questions on Plebe-net and Parent Forum.  [WP-ORG moderators] Di Welle and Megan Hostler asked me if I wanted to make it ‘official’ and become a moderator. Silly me, I said Yes.  Little did I know…”

“We were a not a military family prior to our son attending West Point and worked very hard to catch up!  We live in Arizona and visiting West Point was something we could not do nearly as often as those East Coasters.  So every trip made was indeed very special. We just love West Point and all of its history.”

“Our daughter, Janelle, (ASU & U of Texas) is the Clinical Director for Devereux Arizona. Our older son, Jeff Jr., ( NAU & UOP) is an IT Application Security Specialist.  Our youngest, Ted, is USMA Class of 2003.  He completed his 2nd deployment to Iraq with the 1/23 IN  3-2 SBCT and returned to Ft. Lewis on the auspicious date of 9/11/2007! He has just been selected for the Army FLEP program.”

Jeff and Cheryl Westfall

WP-ORG appreciates all that you do, Cheryl. Thank you!

Thanks, Larry!

Larry Smith’s tenure as a director for the USMA’s Association of Graduates ends at the end of this month.

I first met Larry when he and I both served on the AOG’s Alumni Support Committee. I found him to be as affable and outgoing as he is a tireless worker in support of his alma mater.

Larry made many trips from California to New York at his own expense in his unceasing efforts geared toward what can be described as a “Labor of Love”. Never one to shrink from difficulty, Larry volunteered to tackle the most contentious issues and threw himself into the fray.

We at WP-ORG hope that he will continue his work with us so that we can remain beneficiaries of his “Can Do” attitude. The AOG Board of Directors is losing quite an asset.

Thanks for all your efforts, Larry. Well done.

Larry Smith, USMA 1962

Volunteer Spotlight: Bill MacLean

WP-ORG is proud of its volunteers, they do the heavy lifting and without them we wouldn’t exist. Here WP-ORG CFO, Jack Price, ’64, introduces Bill MacLean.

~ Dempsey

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There is a reason we start honoring the work of our volunteers with Bill MacLean, who has been working with us now, for almost a decade. He has served us in many different functions, primarily because he just can’t say “NO!”, has prodigious skill sets, the tenacity of a dam-building beaver, and the interpersonal strengths to herd cats on our backbone moderator net, populated with a cohort of contentious grads.

Unless you have been spun up to full duty status as a newly minted moderator, you’ve probably never heard of/from Bill. If he’s helped you navigate these shoals, he’s probably in the same mental compartment as your first drill sergeant, or beast barracks squad leader.

Bill is also the Chief Engineer on the WP-ORG fund drive steam engine. He measures performance in excruciating detail and reports real time data in colorful charts that show present and historical performance. That data allows us to continue improvement in what is already a world class non-profit funding operation.

But, as important as the things that Bill has done, are the things he has yet to do. Somewhere ahead is a crisis which will require a volunteer. Bill is the guy in the little glass box you break with the red hammer when trouble comes.

Bill is ’67 graduate MIT (EECS). He worked many years in software and hardware development, marketing, and business development in the CAD/CAM/CAE turn-key systems business. Bill and his wife of 31 years, Pat, reside at Lexington, Mass. Bill is retired from business, devotes ~800-1,000 volunteer hours per year to WP-ORG. Pat is director of a pre-school at Lexington.

Their older son, Daniel (Colgate ’99), is legislative director for a Calif. congressman at the Capitol; on staff since 1999. Their younger son, Bob (USMA ’02), is commander, B Co 1/507th PIR (Airborne School) at Ft. Benning. In prior assignments he was Platoon Leader and staff officer in four deployments, Afghanistan and Iraq, with 173rd Airborne and 3/75th Rangers. Their daughter, Alexandra (Mary Washington ’05) is office manager for a commercial real estate development company at McLean, Va.

At Bob’s graduation, West Point, June 1, 2002 (L-R: Bill, Bob, Dan, Alex, Pat…)

Neither Rain, Nor Snow, Nor O’Dark-Thirty

The traffic is light along Loop 1 in Austin at this time of night. Most of the city has finished watching Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien and televisions have been turned off. People are sleeping.

A policeman manning a speed trap would probably conclude that the evening’s excitement has passed, he can pack it in. But were he to do so, he would miss the engine sound growling ever louder from the stretch down south. He wouldn’t be there to have his eyes widen at a streak of white as it flies past, or to gun his own engine in pursuit of another, obviously on a mission.

Ten minutes later the white apparition would come to a stop in a parking lot in Pflugerville, north of Austin. Its driver, a determined-faced woman brandishing a ring of keys, would stride with purpose to the door of the office that waits for her in silence.

The woman is WP-ORG’s Megan Klein, her mission is to fix an ailing Linux server. The time of day is not a factor, WP-ORG systems are down and Megan is well aware that downtime is not an option. So, she performs her duty and, a short time later, her mission is complete.

Before becoming one of WP-ORG’s two systems engineers, Megan (pronounced ME’gan) worked with Smithfield in North Carolina for several years on their National Pig Development (NPD) swine farms, developing breeding stock. She holds an animal science degree from Cal Poly Pomona.

Life’s fortunes led Megan to Austin in the late ’90s where she nurtured an interest in computer technology and acquired the “White Ghost” for transportation. Several years and 182,000 miles later, she and her chariot still charge headlong into the fray together. Along the way she attracted a husband, Ken, who manages to smooth some of the bumps in the road.

A key player on the WP-ORG team, Megan is instrumental in achieving as close to a 24×7 up-time record for the organization as possible. Now, how many other 501(c)3 organizations can boast this level of availability?

Megan and The Ghost

~ Dempsey