USS Enterprise Completes Presidential Journey
It is a “tradition” in Rotary that when one President’s term ends, the incoming President presents the Past-President with a gavel mounted on a plaque. It is also a tradition that a President serves one term. So what do you do when a Rotarian breaks tradition and steps up to serve back-to-back terms as President for only the second time in the Club’s 77- year history? (The first was Paul Surapine who served in 2001 and 2002).
Unbeknownst to the Club, incoming President Dennis LaPlante had a unique idea. It seems that Al and Dennis were chatting back in January and the discussion moved to Al’s military service. Al had served on the Navy’s USS Enterprise between 1970-1973 and achieved the grade of FTG2.
Al told Dennis that, seven years ago his loving wife Marilyn bought him a scale model of the Enterprise for Christmas so he could put it together in “his spare time”. Well, if you serve on as many boards and volunteer in the community as much as Al does - and serve two terms as Rotary President - and publish two weekly newspapers while being a husband and a dad- spare time doesn’t happen. So the USS Enterprise sat in the closet waiting to be launched. Turns out that Dennis and Al have more in common than being Rotary Presidents. They both like building ship models as a hobby. So Al gave the huge model to Dennis and said –when it’s done –just give me a photo of it for my memory collection.
The two parted and the Enterprise model shifted its port from the closet in Upton to the in-coming presidents home in the port of Mendon where it sat idle until April when Dennis began thinking about the upcoming changing of the post and his assumption of the presidency from Al. He noted “I wanted to do something special for Al in that he did such a fine job as our President for not one, but two years. He gave lots of dedication and time to our club! I also thought it would be a great idea to build the model for him, since he actually served on the ship and was very proud of his time served onboard”.
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In April, Dennis began the task of bring the model to life. “I never let him know that I was actually building it for him. I wanted it to be a total surprise,” he said.
It took Dennis over 100 hours to build the model. He said “I built it out of the box for the most part.” But with his expertise in design, Dennis did add some brass railing details and researched the paint scheme as well as the types of planes carried and their individual markings to add more realism to the model.The ship is modeled from the early 1970’s period and was done in a 1/400 scale.
To add to the surprise, Dennis mounted the finished model on a custom Corian base with brass mounting posts and a plaque inscribed with the words, “To Al Holman with appreciation”.
Dennis made a surprise presentation of the model to a very shocked and emotional Al Holman during the Club’s recent Annual Meeting at the Alicante restaurant in Mendon. It was an emotional changing of the guard with the flag/gavel and the leadership of the Milford Rotary Club passing from Holman to the capable hands of Dennis LaPlante.
Dennis told the club, “ The model was a blast to build and is the largest ship model I have built to date. It is also the first I have made for someone else, so it was especially fun to build. Seeing Al’s reaction and hearing some of his ‘sea stories‘ was the cherry on the top.”
When asked what it is that he most cherished or had a fond memory of during his time on the USS Enterprise,, Al responded, “The day I came back from my first deployment and saw my wife for the first time in nine months on the pier in the middle of a group of 1000 others waiting for the Enterprise to dock.”
When asked what his favorite memory was during his two-year term as President of Rotary, he noted, “I think it was pretty special to be President during the 75th year of the club’s existence, and it was also real special to have the honor of presenting my wife with her Paul Harris Award during last December’s Paul Harris Luncheon. It was so special to her, because her dad had been very involved in Rotary when she was a teenager.
And lastly, I am excited that new members keep joining Rotary and soon become the leaders of the Club thus ensuring that the Ideals and Objectives of Rotary which include – high ethical standards in business and professional life; recognition of the worthiness of all occupations; viewing one’s work as an opportunity to serve the community and the world; and the advancement of international understanding, good will, and peace through a worldwide fellowship of people united in the ideal of service above self.”
“These things will continue long after my term ends, because we have a Club that cares about our community and the world.”