Brief History of New England Shoreline Section

In August of 1987, a group of eight women from Southeastern Connecticut and Rhode Island met to discuss the possibility of chartering a new SWE section. The group first organized themselves as a satellite of the Connecticut Section. Their hard work, and the work of many others who joined them in the following months, finally led to the chartering of the New England Shoreline Section (NESS) in May of 1989 with 18 members. It more than doubled its membership to 37 in the first year!

Tenth Anniversary of NESS Charter

On May 8,1999, SWE-NESS celebrated our tenth anniversary as a chartered section. We held it at the Mystic Hilton in Mystic, CT, and invited all our members, former members, SWE friends form other sections, friends and family to help us celebrate. Great kudos to Kimberly McLean and Denise Schmidt who organized the event! Those who attended were pleasantly surprised by engineering-type gifts at our seats which included mini LEGO &trade sets and stress relievers, thanks to Michele Fitzpatrick.

In addition to SWE members, we had guests Laura Bradley from the Business and Professional Women's Association and Judith Gaetano from the Connecticut Trails Girl Scout Council. After an opening welcome by outgoing President Peg Goter, the following awards were presented to these outstanding members and non-members:

• Marie Quintana - in recognition of her contribution as the driving force behind the establishment and lasting success of SWE-NESS
• Deborah Guerette Main - in recognition for her leadership during the formative years of SWE-NESS
• Susan Anderson - in appreciation for her efforts in establishing an award-winning Career Guidance Program for SWE-NESS
• Laura Bradley - in appreciation for her contributions as an avid SWE-NESS supporter and for her guidance in fundraising, marketing and member recruitment and retention

Along with our serious awards, some fun awards were given to a few of our outstanding members and non-members:

• Agenda Award to Peg Goter for organizing our four hour business meeting/chat sessions to a manageable two hours with her strict agendas
• Blunt Award to Michele Fitzpatrick for her straight-to-the-point approach to problems
• Norwich to Anywhere is Far Award to Kimberly McLean for traveling all over the Section's area for meetings that are always far for her
• No More Labels Award to Linda Bergmann for her excellence in maintaining our mailing database and printing out more than 20,000 labels
• Yard Sale Award/Excellence in Electronic Stuff to Geoff McLean and Ray Main for handling all the electronic bargains at our annual yard sale. Also to Merle Goter for his Excellence in Stuff at our yard sale.

Marie Quintana, one of the driving forces behind the establishment of the New England Shoreline Section, was our keynote speaker. A reprint of her talk "Look How Far We've Come" given at the celebration is here. Marie is the National SWE Scholarship Chair, and is now a member of the Central Ohio Section.

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