Sunset Empire Amateur Radio Club

When All Else Fails... Amateur Radio Works!

The First Annual Combined
Sunset Empire Amateur Radio Club (SEARC)
— & —
Seaside Tsunami Amateur Radio Society (STARS)
All-You-Can-Eat Spaghetti Dinner Fund Raiser - 2008

At this point, because many will not read this whole thing below, let me (Ken Lucke, not only because I also function as webmaster for this site, but as the Committee Chairman), say this about the Spaghetti Feed Committee - without that Committee, none of this would have happened. They did not only a fine job, but an outstanding one - every member of both SEARC and STARS owes them a Thank You - because of their work, our First Annnual Spaghetti Feed was a huge success. Sure, later ones may be bigger and better, but it was these folks that took it from no plan at all other than my proposal to a finished product in less than 3 months, which is phenomenal - all subsequent dinners from will only be building on their foundation).

Conceived in early 2008 by Ken Lucke [WA7PIX] and given final go-ahead by both clubs in late March, 2008 with the agreement to split the proceeds 50/50, this is the story of our First Annual Spaghetti Feed Fund Raiser. Because it was his idea, naturally, Ken Lucke [WA7PIX] was told, basically, to assemble a Committee and to “make it happen” on Friday Night, May 30th, the drive-in night for Sea-Pac, so that we could offer our dinner to the additional Hams that would be in the area - but we were always oriented towards everyone, Hams & non- Hams alike.

That Committee was formed from volunteers (other than Ken Lucke) and consisted initially of Ken [WA7PIX], ,who would function as Chairman, Jeff Holwege [AB7DN] (both SEARC Member and STARS President, so that both clubs would have representation on the Committee), Albert Wood [KE7OUE] , Bernie Gildner [KD7UDX], and was later joined by Ken Butterfield [KE7PPD]. Actually, as far as representation, all members of the Committee were members of both clubs, so it could never be said that interests were not looked after. So, Watson, the game was afoot.

First task - find a location. Several were suggested, but none could beat the Seaside Fire Hall for its proximity to Sea-Pac (walking distance), proximity to parking (across the streets in several lots), built-in cooking facilities to assist prep & cooking (upstairs kitchen area), and price (FREE!). Because SEARC was a fellow 501(c) (3) corporation, the Seaside Firefighters Volunteer Association agreed to let us use their tables, chairs, and cooking equipment, and the City allowed us to use the building itself. We cannot thank enough the City, mayor, Fire Chief, and Firefighters’ Association for allowing us to find a home with them.

Next task, GUESStimate the number of people we would draw (and it was a pure guess, based upon back-engineering how much money we wanted to generate)), set a menu & prices, hours, decide how to run raffles and door prizes, and try to get the word out, and donations in, and another thousand little details.

As we had already decided on a spaghetti feed, we decided to make it all-you-can-eat, and offer good food at a very reasonable price. For the menu, we decided on spaghetti, garlic bread, salad, and a choice of meatballs or hand-made italian sausage. Drinks would be soda pop, fresh made iced tea, coffee, or water.

To our very good fortune, Sea-Pac embraced us almost like long lost family - they did everything they could, as late as we were in their scheduled series of press releases, announcements, web page updates, and flyers, to get the word out to all the Hams that would be coming to their great event. We would like very much to thank them as well. Wayne Schuler and Bob Heath were both particularly helpful as the contact representatives that we had discussions with.

Canvassing the community for donations, not only of food or cash for the feed itself, but for door prizes and raffle items started slow, but as the other committee members became more comfortable with it, it progressed to the point where we had accumulated almost $5,000 in door prizes and raffle items from both local and some larger Ham-related corporations elsewhere. As far as other donations, we were able to come to within $100 of meeting ALL of our expenses for the entire feed BEFORE the doors even opened!

As the date approached, the Committee gang made Riley’s Restaurant in Seaside its haunt - meeting there first every two weeks, then once a week, twice a week, and finally every day during the last week before the event. The staff there was great to us - they always saw that we had private tables, and they got to know us to the point that they usually had our individual favorite beverages either on the table or on the way as we walked in the door.

Temporary Restaurant Licenses were obtained, parking permits filed with Broadway Middle School to give us plenty of overflow parking, Public Service Announcements went out on all the radio stations, newspapers, and any TV stations which covered our area. There were three or four on-air radio interviews with various Club Presidents, or the Committee Chairman - all of this followed the December 2007 Storm that had brought Amateur Radio Operators to the forefront and limelight in the area, so we had no problems getting the attention of the news media. We made about two dozen sandwich signs advertising the feed from donated plywood and paint (some of which were not done until the night before the event! - unfortunately, after all that work, the City of Seaside would not allow us to put them up anywhere, citing their “no off-premise advertising” law, so all that hard work went to waste.

Early on The Day, Ken [WA7PIX] was down at the Fire Department two hours before we had asked SFD for access, hoping that perhaps they had gotten ready for us a little sooner - as indeed they had. Setup started with unloading a lot of cooking equipment and supplies pre-prepped by Ken [WA7PIX] out of his trailer - one of Ken’s businesses is Food Concessions at events, festivals,etc., all over the NorthWest, so he had lots of equipment for cooking for large groups, as well as having prepared the sauce bases, garlic spread, and sausages (by hand) himself, because he also had an important little item - an Oregon State Licensed Restaurant Kitchen in which he could legally do all that prep work.

A few other volunteers started trickling in, so we set them to setting up tables, displays, etc. By the time the 5 PM opening time rolled around, we not only had accrued OVER FORTY volunteers (not just local Hams, but wives, husbands, and others), but we also had a line of people waiting to get in! Perhaps all our hard work would pay off. And so it i did. It’s not that there weren’t a few bumps in the road that we learned from so that we will do better next time - for instance, we need to get started earlier, get all the volunteers fed before the guests arrive, we need to have two cash register lines and two serving lines so that the outside line does not get so long (we heard later that many had driven up, saw the long line outside, and left, to our misfortune - not so next time!), more cooking equipment (both clubs have budgeted for this already), and a few other things learned and already planned for next time.

Next thing we knew, we had a room full of hungry people! Feeding them was sort of on-again, off again, because we still didn’t have enough equipment to keep up with the higher flow time. Also because of that lack of equipment, we had a little quality problem with some of our pasta not getting properly done and such things. Those issues have already been addresesd in the next year’s plan.

However, thanks to the whole Committee, and to the incredible efforts of the OVER FORTY VOLUNTEERS who came out of the woodwork to help, our First Annual Dinner was a rousing success - our ticket sales numbers were below what we had shot for, but our final figure was within 15% of the dollar figure we hoped to raise!

People loved the raffles - we ran them in a fashion also known as a “Chinese Auction”, in which you get to place your tickets on the items you are interested in, rather than all of them in one basket and getting a random chance price if your number is drawn. People loved this - there was one item that only one man put tickets in on, but it was something that he really wanted, and so with those odds, how could he lose?

Prizes? Prizes? Wow, did we have prizes - we had so many door prizes that we were giving one to two away every ten to fifteen minutes ALL evening. We had raffle prizes. We had prizes for the Youngest Ham (8 years old), the Oldest Ham (89 years old), the Newest Ham (less than a week), the Longest Licensed Ham (over 50 years), and the Furthest From Home Ham (Southern Arizona). We even had Dennis Motschenbacher, the Yaesu/Vertex Vice President of Amateur Radio Products Division, attend and delivered a $100 Yaesu Gift Certificate personally to a lucky raffle prize winner.

The volunteers were great, and worked their hearts out. The XYLs upstairs doing the meatballs and garlic bread, the Cook Crew outside, including poor Nick Kaim [KE7NIT] at the Salamander (cheese melter), toasting not only the garlic bread, but his face off, all evening... the servers, the cleanup crew, the setter-uppers and the tearer-downers, the cashier crew, the raffle handlers - it could not have happened without them. I had been told when I first proposed this idea that volunteerism in our club was practically non-existent. I am here to say - “No, it isn’t!!!” - Give ‘em something fun to volunteer for (as opposed to stacking and unstacking traffic cones or barricades), and they will be there... to a person, every volunteer I talked to said that they had a great time and looked forward to doing it again next year.

We also heard all the next two days at Sea-Pac about how much fun our guests had at the dinner - I overheard conversations about it without even being part of the conversation, and I was stopped time and time again by people who recognized me and wanted to thank us for the job we did (if you look through the pictures on this page, you will see that I’m kinda hard to not recognize - the fat, sweaty, unshaven guy... I had foolishly thought that I’d get a chance to do the setup, get things organized, go home (only half a mile) to take a shower and change into some nice clothes, and come back as a decent representative of the Committee - but, noooooo....... I got pulled in so many directions, and had heaped so much stress on myself to make sure that every little detail was attended to [after all, I was “da guy who thunk it all up”], that the only thing I could do was have Veronica [WA7CAT] bring a clean shirt from home that I could change into (and that didn’t stay clean for long), and by the end of the evening, I looked more like a representative of “Bridge Sleepers-Underers Anonymous” than the Committee Chairman. For that, my apologies to all who saw me - that’s another thing we have addressed for future dinners; a plan to prevent that sort of stress).

It was also unanimously decided by Committee recommendation and unanimously ratified by both club memberships to donate $150 from each club BACK to the Seaside Volunteer Firefighters’ Association, for their willingness to allow us to use their facilities, and the help that their members gave us during the day and evening. I think that they were quite surprised at this.

All in all, it was tremendously fun, and everyone was already talking about the next year’s event even before this one came to a close.

We would like to also thank all of the following sponsors, donators, and others who contributed food, cash, merchandise, or services to the success of our First Annual Spaghetti Feed Fund Raiser:

Advanced Collision Repair, Albert Wood, Artworks, Astoria Auto Wrecking & Towing, Astoria Ice, Black & Decker, Bruce Smith Auto, Bud’s Campground, Cash & Carry, Clatsop Power Equipment, Cleanline Surf Shop, Coast Hardware, Coastal Auto Body & Paint, Coastal Repair & Maintenance, Columbia Safety & Security, Communications Specialists, Compass Community Bank, Cory Olsen, Costco, Del’s Chevron, Dooger’s Seafood & Grill, EmComm Products, Englund Marine, Fred Meyer, Gary Clay Photography, Gearhart Builders’ Supply, Girtle’s Seafood & Steaks, Golden Shores Realty, Guy’s Muffler & Radiator Shop, Ham Radio Outlet, Jim Varner’s Automotive, John Cook Glass Studio, KMUN Radio, Ken & Sons Market, Ken Lucke Photography, Ken Tolliver,PC, Kitchen Collection, Lawrence J. Popkin,PC, Les Schwab (Seaside), Les Schwab (Warrenton), Link’s Outdoor Store, Loop-Jacobsen Jewelry, Lyle’s Garden Center, Malt Shop, Morning Star Café, Necanicum Gallery/Nancy Loukkula Watercolors, NNB Radio (KAST), North Coast Auto Service, North Oregon Coast Symphony, Office Max, Pacific Paint, Papa Jack’s Farm Supply, Papa Murphy’s Pizza, Phillips Candy, Pudgy’s Restaurant & Lounge, Purple Cow Toys, Riverside Pet Supply, Rod’s Auto & Marine Electric, Safeway, Sea-Pac, Seaside Coffee Roasters, Seaside Helicopter, LLC, Seaside Mostly Hats, Signature Imports, The Man Store/Flashback Productions, Thiel’s Music, TLC Federal Credit Union, Totes, Trucke’s, VanDusen Beverages, Veronica Warren, Vince Williams Suzuki, Warren Kan, Warrenton Auto Parts (NAPA), Western Oregon Waste, Weyerhauser, What Nots & Whimsy, Wheel Fun Rentals, Yaesu/Vertex Standard, Young’s Bay Electronics (Radio Shack), Yummy Wine Bar & Bistro. And last, but certainly not least, The City of Seaside through the Seaside Fire Department, and the Seaside Fire Department Volunteer Firefighters’ Association.

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