Star Spangled Violets

Nov 2004

Violet Show Decorations, Annapolis, MD

Friday Festivities

(All pictures on this page are "clickable" for larger views.)

On Friday Nov 12 the Violet Show was judged. Rodney Barnett, shown here with Svetlana Speransky, was the head judge. On the right, Olive Ma Robinson discusses her design with Design Schedule Coordinator Bob Loomis.

In the evening at the convention we had the traditional MAAVS social banquet in the hotel restaurant. After dinner the assembled diners were treated to MAAVS own extraordinarily talented Rich Follett. In addition to growing violets and teaching high school theater and arts, Rich is a troubadour, wandering with his guitar and singing traditional ballads, ballads he has written and ballads from his new CD - "A Place in the Circle". On the left Faye Wagman introduces Rich to the after dinner crowd.

The Nations finest violet club, the Triangle African Violet Society, TAVS, listens to the ballads of Rich Follett. Pictured left to right are Libbie Glembocki, Barbara Taswell-Miller, Roxanne Shrewsbury, Jean Tippett and Linda Abplanalp.

The Auction

When Jack Wilson is around you know there's bound to be an auction. AVSA's official auctioneer and MAAVS violet grower, Jack jumps right into the auctioneer cadence at the hint of a microphone and something to sell. The Ways and Means auction helped raise money for the MAAVs treasury.

This beautiful violet pillow was won by Barbara Taswell-Miller of TAVS. Mary Mostafa assists with distributing the auction winnings while Roxanne looks on.

Happy Birthday Julie

Happy Birthday Julie Gordon, President of Old Dominion AV. Singing Happy Birthday at the MAAVS banquet is becoming a tradition. The Radisson Hotel brought in an ice cream desert complete with burning candle as all of MAAVS sang Happy Birthday to Julie. Julie is faster than the camera guy - by the time he made it across the room to her table, Julie blew the candle out. Therefore, click on this picture, admire Julie's great and happy smile and pretend the candle is still burning. Happy Birthday Julie!

Online Brats "Goody Bag" Door Prizes

This year some additional fun was provided by the African Violet Brat Pack in the form of door prize drawings. Stapled to each "goody bag" was a door prize entry. Many prizes were given out to winning ticket holders. Some very nice prizes were donated to MAAVS by the Brats which made the goody bag especially valuable. Raffles are fun and the Brats efforts and contributions made it a fun banquet evening. Here Belle Amoroso serves as the door prize emcee with microphone in hand. With help from Mary Mostafa the door prize drawing gets underway.

Kathryn Paauwe picks a winning number while Mary holds the raffle bowl. At the right Roxanne displays her door prize.

Online African Violet Brats

This online group is from all over the US but thankfully they are a MAAVS affiliate. Front row from the left is Belle Amorosa, Jillene Dolister, Julie Gordon, Donna Biggs, Charlie and Linda Rowe, Mary Mostafa. Standing in the back row is Ken Barbi. Cheers to the Brat Pack for supporting MAAVS in a big way.

After Dinner

The banquet room is quiet as banquet attendees watch the after dinner activities.

Posing for the Camera

What do you get when a pair of Susans pose for the camera? We don't know but it's a great picture. At the right CD sales are hot as Rich Follett sells CD's to admiring music lovers. Rich donated some of the CD proceeds to MAAVS - Thank You Rich!

MAAVS Board Meeting

When the party was over and everyone wearily disbanded, the MAAVS board meeting commenced in a hotel conference room. I'm not sure if it has ever been done before but here is possibly the first ever MAAVS board family portrait. Seated from the left are Mary Boland, Laurene Jones, Ken Barbi, Kitty Hedgpeth, Faye Wagman and Carol Van. Standing: Jack Wilson, Susan Barbi, Libbie Glembocki, Gary Gordon, John Cook, Doris Brownlie, Linda Abplanalp and Irwin Wagman. At the other end of the room, standing behind the camera, Tom Glembocki. With all the names on this page there's bound to be some mispelling or misidentification. You know the drill - send mail to tom at maavs.org . eMail with subject lines such as Viagra, Low Mortgage Rates or Help needed from the Nigerian ministry of information automatically earn you a trip into the spam bucket. Other stuff gets fixed promptly - let me know.