An open letter to the Fort Bliss ESC (Enlisted Spouses Club) from the Five Founding Mamas in response to their facebook post on July 10, 2014, Unfortunately the Fort Bliss ESC has been disbanded. Thank you to all of our members, past and present, for your support. To the Fort Bliss ESC Executive Board: You do not know me, but I am one of the founding members of the Fort Bliss Enlisted Spouses Club and I am posting this message on behalf of all five of the founding members. This post is addressed to the Executive Board but it is our hope that the current membership also reads it to fully understand why we are speaking up now. Allow me to give you all a little background on why the Fort Bliss ESC existed in the first place. When this club was established in 2011, the NCO Wives Club did not allow spouses of soldiers below the rank of E-5 to join and the Officers and Civilians Spouses Club prohibits any enlisted spouse membership. Because of this, we felt there was a great need for a spouses club that welcomed all enlisted spouses in their ranks and gave them an opportunity to contribute to this community in a way they had not been able to in the past. The establishment of the Fort Bliss Enlisted Spouses Club was the result of thousands of hours of effort on the part of the founding members, as well as the first elected Executive Board of 2011. Our vision was that the club would be a place to enrich the lives of all enlisted spouses through sub-clubs and other social events, as well as an opportunity to help new spouses learn to navigate Army life from those who had gained experience over the years. It was a difficult and daunting task to start a private organization from scratch. Countless hours of personal time were devoted to writing the constitution and by-laws, researching how other military spouse clubs were structured, filing appropriate IRS documents, ensuring we fulfilled all the requirements of a private organization charter from FMWR and most of all, demonstrating to this community that the spouses of all enlisted soldiers deserved a club to call their own. Others donated their services to support our vision of the club -- most notably, the graphic artist who volunteered her time and talent to design the Fort Bliss ESC logo. We called ourselves the Five Founding Mamas, because establishing this club was a painful but worthwhile labor of love, much like childbirth. The first meeting in March, 2011, was attended by almost 50 spouses -- a number that far exceeded our expectations and confirmed to us that the time was right for an ESC at Fort Bliss. After our elections and sub-clubs were established, the Fort Bliss ESC enjoyed a positive reputation as a fun and worthwhile club, and our numbers increased to almost 100 members. My husband and I left Fort Bliss in 2012 and have now PCSd back here this month. I was so excited to see the words Enlisted Spouses Club on the sign outside the old commissary building -- it was almost unbelievable that an idea proposed at a backyard patio table resulted in a club with a place to call their own on Fort Bliss. To say the recent announcement of the dissolution of the club was a shock would be a gross understatement. Subsequently learning the Fort Bliss ESC was dissolved by FMWR because of mismanagement by you, the Executive Board, is an outrage and a slap in the face to all members, past and present. How could you let this happen??? How could you shirk your obligation as Board members and ignore the advice of your Advisors and the directives of FMWR to such a degree that the ESC was shut down and forced to dissolve? Do you know the gravity of what you have allowed to happen? You have squandered a special and hard-fought opportunity that was entrusted to your care by those who came before you. You have betrayed the interests of the members of the ESC by not performing your duties as laid out in the constitution and by-laws. You have forever prevented the ESC from operating on Fort Bliss in the future. And most damaging of all, you have reinforced the opinion of the nay-sayers who said that enlisted spouses could not maintain their own club on Fort Bliss and attempted to block the ESCs establishment. No doubt those detractors are pleased with themselves because they have now been proven to be right. By you. The Five Founding Mamas did not start the Fort Bliss ESC for ourselves -- we did it for you. We did not meddle in the business of the ESC after it was founded but laid the foundation so that the members could govern the club and make it their own. You have allowed the hard work of the first members of this club to be wasted and its heartbreaking for us to see it all go down the drain because those charged with the responsibility of operating the ESC did not respect the club enough to do their jobs correctly. There are really no words to accurately reflect the sadness, disappointment and anger that we all feel right now. The current membership of the Fort Bliss ESC is owed an apology from the Executive Board. Not just a cryptic announcement of its demise on a Facebook page stating unforeseen circumstances -- as if dissolving the club was unavoidable and no big deal. The Fort Bliss Enlisted Spouses Club was a big deal. A very big deal. And now its gone. Marian Willing Claudia Davenport Christina Brady Kristine Pandy Penelope Apolinario-Ibay
Posted on: Sun, 13 Jul 2014 15:58:17 +0000
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