Continuity Dinner
St Louis Section–ACS

Continuity Dinner, 2007

Ted Gast and Steve Kinsley enjoy a quiet moment before the Continuity Dinner.

The Continuity Dinner is a fancier-than-usual Board Meeting, held each December to mark the official passing of the gavel from the outgoing to the incoming Chair. This event is often held at a different venue than our regular monthly Board Meetings. We eat a little better, drink a little better, dress a little nicer, and often welcome members we haven’t seen around for awhile.

The Continuity Dinner for 2007 was held on December 15th at CJ Muggs in Webster Groves. Attendance was slightly down, but spectacular, considering the fourth largest December snowfall ever recorded in St Louis occurred on the same evening. The weather forced a quickened meeting pace; however, all had a good time. The annual General Meeting of the Section was held first, followed by the December Board meeting.

Two other orders of business set this night apart from the ordinary.

This night, the winner of the Distinguished Service Award is announced, though informally, because the award is not actually presented until the Recognition Night Banquet during Chemical Progress Week. But if you promise not to tell, we can reveal that this year’s winner is Bruce Ritts.

And the Henry Godt Memorial Lecture is delivered by a “secret speaker,” whose identity is known only to him/herself and the Chair, until the Chair reveals it at the final moment. The lecture memorializes Henry Godt, the first winner of the Distinguished Service Award, and the first to give a year-in-review talk at Continuity Dinner. Obviously that first talk was not a memorial to Henry, but the series he inaugurated came to its present name while Henry was still very much alive. This year’s “secret speaker” was supposed to be Alexa Serfis, but she was snowed in and could not make the trek. She handed her speech off to Pat Burrell-Standley for delivery.

The end of the meeting was a historic passing of the gavel from the last Chair of the Section’s first century, Steve Kinsley, to the first Chair of the second century, Keith Stine. All attendees signed a copy of the night’s program, which will be sent to the Section archive. Be sure to mark your calendars for December 10, 2107, the next century handoff. What with global warming and all, there should be a lot less snow.