President Larry Stevens' Address to the 120th Convention

I am very excited to serve as the 101st Texas SAR President. I have been a member of our society for nearly 28 years. My first chapter was the Paul Carrington in Houston. In 1994 I became a charter member of the PineyWoods Chapter in North Houston.

I am dedicated to the ideals and objectives of SAR. The goals for my term include continuing the success of our previous administrations while concentrating on communications with members and the public and increasing our educational programs. I firmly believe that an educated and knowledgeable membership is a force better equipped to advance our goals and ideals both inside and outside our society.

We must continue to grow the objectives of our organization. To effectively do so, we need a long-range plan, stating our goals and measuring our progress against those goals.

This long-range plan must address recruitment. Past President Bob Cohen stressed displaying the Texas SAR brand and the 20 second elevator speech. Continuing this theme, we need to assist all of our members to become membership advocates, equipping them with tools to start the conversation. One does not need to be a chapter registrar to get the ball rolling.

Both internal and external communications must be addressed in our long-range plan. We must do a better job of communicating with our members. Our Communication Secretary and State Secretary have about 1500 e-mail addresses for our 2,700 Texas members. Yet all of our society communications are via email. So, we have almost half of our membership who are not reached in this manner. Therefore, many Texas members do not receive letters or messages from our state society. We must find ways as chapters and state officers to communicate with these members. I will be suggesting methods to do this and will be open to suggestions from each of you. District Meetings will be encouraged to reach more members face-to-face.

Our Texas web-site has just been redesigned by our web master Ray Cox and his committee. We now have a great interactive site and it is much easier for guests to navigate. Our Communications, IT, Education, and Publicity Committees will be meeting together to continue to add more outreach programs to the website. We really have some good ones. These programs include some of the following topics: colonial life, historic flags, colonial and military music, soldiers, sailors and privateers, and historic biographies. Program guides and slide shows will be made available for some of these presentations.

We also have Facebook and a Facebook Committee chaired by Schuylar Crist of San Antonio. Check this out, become a member, and post or link activities of your chapter to our state Facebook page.

Texas SAR communications with the public are enhanced by activities of our Color Guard. Their presence in community events, parades and school programs publicizes our goals and ideals. Some of these events have been recorded on television and in local papers. We need to highlight this “Publicity” by providing pictures to the local community newspapers.

Displaying our BRAND is communicating and opens the opportunity to talk about our society and recruit members. Bob Cohen has presented Texas SAR pins and bumper stickers. I will encourage wearing Texas Society caps and shirts with our logo to advertise our Society.

Education is another area in which I wish to add emphasis to in my term. We will set education program goals in our long-range plan. The Sons of the American Revolution was founded to preserve the memories of the sacrifices of our Patriot Ancestors who fought for and secured our liberty in the Revolutionary War. The history of these men and the women who banded together to free themselves from the oppressive King and Parliament of Great Britain, and the history of the men who gave us our Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and judicial system that are still strong today must be preserved. We must teach our past before those memories disappear.

NSSAR endorses education programs. One of these is a Texas based program - the “Why America Is Free” curriculum. A link will be added to the Texas website to enable users to contact the founders of Values Through History, a 501(c)3, and discover more about this insightful program that enhances the existing 5th Grade Social Studies unit for the period 1750-1800.

These will be important parts of our long-range plan and a beginning of a road that our forefathers took. Reviewing our history we find, “Such were the thoughts of a gathering of men as they discussed this as they watched the 100th Centennial Celebration of 1876 in San Francisco. From this discussion the Sons of the American Revolution had its roots. Formally established in 1889, the Sons of the American Revolution or SAR was chartered by the United States Congress in 1906, signed by President Theodore Roosevelt”.

The history of the birth of the United States of America must be preserved. God bless the SAR and God bless the U.S.A.

Larry Stevens
Texas SAR President