Conference Room Of Attoreny/CPA Ray K. Pinkstaff
Pinkstaff, Simpson, Hall & Headrick, P.C., Certified Public Accountants,
8858 Cedar Springs Lane, Knoxville, Tennessee 37923

17 May 2013

Coach Chuck Rohe and association chairman Coppley Vickers called the meeting to order at approximately 12:00 noon. Coppley asked Tom Scott to work with him as co-chair of the association.

In attendance were Bob Barber, Tom Carmichael, Bud Ford, Donnie Graham, Don Pinkston, Chuck Rohe, Henry Rose, Paul Scott, Tom Scott, Bill Skinner, and Coppley Vickers. Webmaster Art Perfetti joined the meeting while it was in progress. At 3:00 pm, Audry Hardy, Pat Pomphrey, and Mike Tomasello joined the meeting by conference call and added their input.

The first order of business was to discuss and create eight committees. Each of the committees was charged to draw up a statement of purpose. Henry Rose suggested that the various committee chairs meet in a week or so, perhaps by conference call, to make sure we stay on track and continue to develop plans of where we go from here. The committees are the following:

1. The Website Technical Committee will be headed by Bob Barber. Donnie Graham will also serve on this subcommittee, along with Tom Carmichael and Coppley Vickers. In the course of the meeting, the full group voted unanimously to do two things of relevance to the Website Technical Committee:
   1. To create two websites—www.rohetrackera.com to be the main website for announcements, the preservation of our history, etc.; and, at Art Perfetti’s suggestion, forum.rohetrackera.com, where Rohe era (fall 1962-spring 1971, plus Rohe recruits for 1972) athletes and key supporters can find the directory and post any unedited messages they want to post. The former site will be generally open to the public, with the possibility that some sections can be made password protected if it seems advisable. The latter will be entirely password protected and limited to the Rohe era athletes and a limited number of supporters approved by Coach Rohe. However, it will contain a link to the main public website.
   2. To hire Art Perfetti as webmaster. Art is the webmaster for Coach Rohe’s Nike Coaches’ Clinics. Once he has a thorough understanding of what we want on the websites, he will give us detailed cost estimates. The cost does not include hosting fees for the two websites, an annual SSL fee, and Art’s time billed per hour for updates. Obviously, the original setup costs will depend on how much we place on the websites. Bob Barber and his subcommittee will coordinate with Art and others (Gerry Purdy and the Knoxville Track Club webmaster, for instance) who have technical knowledge of how to maintain a website. Ownership of the website domain name will be put in the name of our committee chairman, Coppley Vickers.
2. The Directory Committee will be headed by Roger Neiswender, and will include Don Pinkston, Steve Deaton, Mike Tomasello, and Bud Ford. They are already at work trying to obtain current contact information on as many Rohe era athletes as possible.
3. The History Committee will be headed by Tom Scott and will include Charlie Durham, Bud Ford, Audry Hardy, Don Pinkston, Pat Pomphrey, Henry Rose, Paul Scott, and Bill Skinner. It will be divided into three smaller subcommittees for History, Stories, and Videos & Photos. History will be a major part of what we post on www.rohetrackera.com and will include links to Paul Scott’s 79-page thesis on the history of UT men’s track and field, 1889-1967; the work of Bud Ford in compiling the year-by-year records of UT track and cross country into the 21st century; the first-hand stories of UT athletes about their experiences running, jumping, and throwing for Chuck Rohe; oral history interviews that we hope to conduct with Coach Rohe and others; and anything else that pertains to our track & field history, including stories of how our experiences as Rohe-era athletes taught us life-lessons that we still employ. Written transcripts of oral histories will be added to the website as they are completed. Videos generally will not be placed on the website, but will be preserved on CD disks and made available to interested members of the Rohe-era directory.
4. The Electronic Newsletter & Communications Committee. This committee will consist of Tom Carmichael, Bob Barber, Bud Ford, and Tom Scott. The main function of the newsletter chair will be to post announcements on a timely basis with regard to future reunions, achievements of Rohe-era athletes, deaths, retirements, and other newsworthy items. The newsletter will be accessed through the main public website, www.rohetrackera.com, but the editor will be expected to follow the postings on the forum (www.rohetrackeraforum.com), as many of the newsworthy items are likely to appear on the password-protected site first. Bud Ford agreed to monitor the obituaries that appear on the message board to make sure that all Rohe-era athletes are informed in a timely manner. Although the message board for the forum (forum.rohetrackera.com) will be unedited, the committee members will monitor the site and make suggestions for its improvement.
5. The Reunion Committee. Coppley Vickers will chair this committee. Other members are Danny Brown, Steve Deaton, Donnie Graham, Audry Hardy, Bill High, David Job, Don Pinkston, and Winston Russell. Its first task is to plan a reunion for the fall of 2014, probably in conjunction with a UT football game.
6. The Financial and Funding Committee will be headed by Henry Rose. Other members are Ron Calloway, Jeff Gable, Dave Jensen, George Jensen, Hardee McAlhaney, George Moschis, Pat Pomphrey, Mike Tomasello, Ron Turner, Tom Scott, and Coppley Vickers. This subcommittee will help with fundraising and make suggestions on how we pay for the two websites.
7. The UT Athletic Department Relationship Committee will be chaired by Bob Barber. Bill High, Bill Sellmer, Mike Tomasello, and Coppley Vickers have also agreed to serve on this committee, which will be responsible for keeping the UTAD informed on our activities and, hopefully, for gaining its support. Coach Rohe will contact Vice Chancellor/Director of Athletics Dave Hart to let him know about our plans. Bob Barber will contact Chris Fuller, the Senior Associate Athletics Director for Development and External Operations. Bob has worked in the past with Chris, who used to be the contact person in the Athletic Department for track and field. Bob will also contact J.J. Clark, the Director of Track & Field and Cross Country.
8. At the suggestion of Coach Rohe and others, we decided to create a Dual Athletes Committee that will consist of Paul Scott, Bud Ford, Richmond Flowers, and Karl Kremser, and will document the role of dual athletes in football and track or, in some cases, basketball and track.

Those in attendance agreed that our focus will be on the Rohe era and, to a lesser degree, the “Ancients” who came just before us. Once we are established, we will encourage the more recent eras of UT Track & Field to start their own websites. A major exception is that our History section will include the year-to-year data and school-record data that Bud Ford has already compiled on all eras into the early 21st century. We will also establish a link to the Knoxville Track Club website, www.ktc.org. We do not want to duplicate the current information that one finds on the UTAD website, www.utsports.com. However, we may add a link from our website to that site.

A consensus existed that our goal is to establish a website first. After it is up and running, we will consider whether we want to produce a book, along the lines suggested by George Moschis and others. In the meantime, we will accumulate as many stories as we can so that any future book writers will have plenty of material with which to work.

Coppley Vickers volunteered to look into setting up a tax-exempt 501(c)3 entity for the website project and fundraising, but cautioned that setting up such entities was not part of his practice. [Since then, he has met with Ray Pinkstaff, who agreed to set up the entity for us as “Rohe Era Track and XC Association, Inc., ” a State of Tennessee nonprofit corporation.] We agreed that Henry Rose would open an account in his personal name designated as the Rohe Era Account and that the account would be changed to the entity when it is set up. [After the meeting, Henry decided that the account should be in two names, and Tom Scott agreed that his name would also be on the account.] Because we want to get the websites up as soon as possible, the committee agreed not to wait on the tax-exempt 501(c3) entity before we started raising money and setting up the websites. The committee agreed that Coppley would reserve the domain names for the websites and transfer the names to the entity when it is formed.

The meeting was adjourned at about 4:00 pm. After the meeting, Coach Rohe and a few others met informally with Marvin West, who has offered to write a story about our website plans. We will provide him with the minutes of our meeting and some of the best (printable) stories that we have been posting on e-mail in recent months.

Rohe Era Track and XC Association: Coppley Vickers (co-chair), Tom Scott (co-chair), Bob Barber, Tom Carmichael, Bud Ford, Donnie Graham, Audry Hardy, Bill High, George Jensen, George Moschis, Don Pinkston, Pat Pomphrey, Chuck Rohe, Henry Rose, Paul Scott, Bill Skinner, and Mike Tomasello.

The main Association committees are as follows:

1. The Website Technical Committee: Bob Barber (chair), Tom Carmichael, Donnie Graham, Coppley Vickers.
2. The Directory Committee: Roger Neiswender (chair), Don Pinkston, Bud Ford, Steve Deaton, Mike Tomasello.
3. The History Committee: Tom Scott (chair), Bud Ford, Audry Hardy, Pat Pomphrey, Henry Rose, Paul Scott, Bill Skinner, Don Pinkston, Charlie Durham.
4. The Electronic Newsletter and Communications Committee: Tom Carmichael, Bob Barber, Tom Scott, Bud Ford.
5. The Reunion Committee: Coppley Vickers (chair), Danny Brown, Bill High, Donnie Graham, Winston Russell, Don Pinkston, Audry Hardy, Steve Deaton, David Job.
6. The Financial and Funding Committee: Henry Rose (chair), Pat Pomphrey, Mike Tomasello, George Moschis, Coppley Vickers, Tom Scott, George Jensen, Dave Jensen, Ron Turner, Ron Calloway, Hardee McAlhaney, Jeff Gable.
7. The UT Athletic Department Relationship Committee: Bob Barber (chair), Bill High, Mike Tomasello, Coppley Vickers, Bill Sellmer
8. The Dual Athletes Committee: Paul Scott, Bud Ford, Richmond Flowers, Karl Kremser.