On November 4, 2011, Scott Suits, the National Awards Chairman of the Mercedes Benz Club of America (MBCA), announced that the Long Beach – South Bay Section from Southern California was named the 2010 MBCA Section of the Year. The award was presented by Mr. Suits to Steve Ross, the Southwest Regional Director, at the Fall National Board meeting in Dearborn, Michigan. In turn, Mr. Ross presented the award and accompanying banner to the winning Section at a dinner on November 19th at the Phoenix Club located in Anaheim, California. This is a repeat win for the Section, who also won the award in 2000. Accepting the award from Mr. Ross was the Section President, Geoff Bolt. Also in attendance were other Section Board members, including Allen Goodloe (Vice President), Chris Bingham (Secretary), Gerhard Fehrmann (Treasurer), and directors Joe Edone, Evelyn Iles, and Nora Fleming, and other friends and family. Mr. Bolt said, “I accept this award as a great honor, and wish to thank the MBCA Award Committee for our selection, as well as to thank Steve Ross for his expert guidance and advice. This award was the culmination of a lot of hard work and dedication from our Board members as well as key active members of our Section. My gratitude and extra thanks go out to Chuck Woske, one of our most active members, who wrote, edited, and coordinated our winning award submission in under nine days—no small feat. The Long Beach – South Bay Section is always looking for ways to improve its service to the Section’s members, and our event calendar and increase of membership is a great sign of our success in doing this.” Mr. Ross added “This Section has done the Southwest Region and MBCA proud, and I extend my thanks to Geoff and his team for their hard work and continued efforts. Being awarded Section of the year is a long and difficult process. To begin with the section has to be performing in all of the critical areas such as newsletter, events, website, membership growth, financial planning and reporting to name a few. After the section determines that they are qualified to for the award someone must undertake the task of applying for the award. The time required to apply for Section of the Year is lengthy and time consuming. As the Long Beach - South Bay Section learned the time spent is well worth the effort.” “Our Section won’t rest on its laurels, however”, quoted Mr. Bolt. “We are wrapping up another wonderful year in 2011, and have already created an aggressive and eventful 2012 schedule. Our goals for the coming year include increasing our service and outreach to our members, to execute our schedule in such a way that our members will be involved and enjoy themselves, and at the same time to give back to the community and the worthy charities that we support. I am very proud of all of our members, for without them and their service we would not exist.”
