New England Lotus Lovers, Inc.
NELLI Ends the Year
with an Introduction to the Elise
The final club outing for 2004 was an open house at Lotus Motorsports in Waltham, Mass., on October 16th followed by the annual business meeting and elections. Steve Serio, owner of Lotus Motorsports and its companion Aston Martin of New England, was generous enough to allow the club to have an open house at his dealership and to get acquainted with the new Federal Elise. The business is located on Linden Street (Rt. 60) in Waltham, just off of Main Street - Route 20. The shop is usually closed on weekends, but Steve opened up for NELLI. It's a beautiful facility, and if you haven't been there, drop by and take a look.
I arrived at about 10 am, and Tom Curran was already there with his son and his Lotus Esprit. Quite a few more members arrived, many with their Lotus, including Bruce Jadarian with his new Ellise. Mark and Karen Michalski were there with their bright yellow M-100 Elan which they had purchased just in time to drive it to Birmingham for Log 24. New member Andrew Bodge arrived with his S2 Elan, and a surprise was Ray Boulay who lives most of the year in Stowe, Vt, but had just returned from a trip to Europe and was staying in Carlisle. Ray's Elan is still under construction and he was driving his 500hp Mercedes E55 AMG coupe (some machine). George Cheney and son Bud were down from Kennebunkport with their Europa - yes, George H.W. Bush is doing just fine, thanks for asking. And there were many more.
About noon we departed for John Brewer's Tavern just around the corner on Main Street for lunch and our annual business meeting and election. This year we had a private room which made things go much more smoothly. We all enjoyed a very nice lunch and then got down to club business. Treasurer Jon Gardner gave a brief report and we are pleased to find that the bank account is healthy and that we have picked up quite a few new members. Discussion centered around two things. First, the impact of the Elise on our club and second, how to get more members to participate in activities. For the first, we think that the Elise will have a substantial impact on NELLI. We believe that the club will gain quite a few new members, and that these members will likely be somewhat different in their approach to Lotus than the typical owner of a "classic" Lotus. Time will tell. For the second, quite a few interesting suggestions were made regarding the types of events that we might have and how we might present those events to the members.
At the conclusion of the business meeting, we had a very special presentation. As President, I have started what I hope will become an important tradition within the club by creating a perpetual award called the "President's Trophy" which will be given to the club member who the President thinks has made the most significant contribution to the club during the year. The first recipient of this award is Jon Gardner, and if you all had any idea of how much Jon does for this club, I am sure that he would be the unanimous choice. Congratulations Jon!! And while we are on the subject of club contributions, I want to thank Ben Levy for all of his great work in building and maintaining the NELLI website. Thanks Ben!!
The award presentation was followed by the annual elections. The election results were:
-
President: John White
Treasurer: Jon Gardner
Clerk: George Cheney
- Trustees:
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Foster Cooperstein
Bill Gavin
Mark Michalski
Dick Perdichizzi
Steve Smith
Thanks to all of the club members who contributed to and participated in the club activities this year. I hope that you enjoyed it and we are all looking forward to next year. For those members who were not able to come to the events, we hope that you will join in during the coming year. We do have a great time and it's a perfect way to enjoy all things Lotus.
Best regards,
John White
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Last updated: 01 March 2007
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