Fellow GLASers,
So has Spring given you a spring in your step yet? Well, if not, we hope our Spring calendar will get you excited!
Just this past Monday, “The High Roller,” the world's biggest Ferris wheel, enjoyed its grand debut in Las Vegas, providing its first passengers with breathtaking views from 550 feet high above the Strip. So is our ASNT timing great or what?! For this Tuesday’s meeting, we’re very excited to host Ricky Morgan as our speaker to provide us with a look at the NDT work he performed for months on “The High Roller” while it was being built in China.
Yes, unfortunately, the world's biggest Ferris wheel was made in China, but fortunately it was made for us and inspected by one of our most accomplished GLASers. Ricky was sent to China in his capacity as the Lead Structural Steel Inspector and Technical Operations Director for Asia for the Smith Emery Company. Prior to his 20 year tenure with Smith Emery, Ricky was the NDT Level III General Manager for Muldoon Marine Services and the Lead Field Inspector for Ron Nisbet Associates. Currently, Ricky is President of his own Morgan Inspection Solutions and Director of Business Development for Metal Fatigue Solutions. But our Greater Los Angeles Section is especially proud of and grateful to Ricky for his recent service on the Board of our National Society, including as our ASNT 2010-2011 President and 2011-2012 Chair, and his many years of service in numerous capacities to our local L.A. Section, including as our Chair in 1999-2000.
And unlike the Ferris wheel, Ricky is 100% made in the USA. We GLASers are also very proud of and grateful to Ricky for his service in the United States Army, as we are of all who have put on the uniform on our behalf. To honor our veterans and those currently serving in our armed forces, I launched our ASNT-GLAS Military & Veterans Initiative last year with the Women’s Initiative with the goal of recruiting, retaining and promoting more veterans, military and women in the ranks of NDT. To that end, we are discounting at half-price all our ASNT night classes at Bosco Tech for vets, military and women, and we are celebrating Military Appreciation Month a month early here in April with Ricky by complimenting dinner at this month’s meeting for vets and current service members in attendance, just as we did for women in attendance last month for Women’s History Month with Marybeth Miceli, who gave an excellent and enlightening talk about the current state of keeping not London’s but all the structurally deficient L.A. and U.S. bridges from falling down. As Marybeth exhorted us, vote infrastructure, people! Infrastructure!
As usual, the fun starts at Maggie’s Pub with our social hour at 6pm, dinner hour starts at 7pm, and we’ll get Ricky’s talk going around 7:45 because Ricky has to leave a little early to get over to the airport in time for a red-eye to the Big Apple. There’s no rest for the weary, even more reason we’re grateful Ricky’s making time for us GLASers.
For our next second-Tuesday-of-the-month meeting at Maggie’s, May 13, in anticipation of our literally “out-of-this-world” Year-End Banquet June 21 with the space shuttle Endeavour, we will host a talk about the grand history of Los Angeles aerospace by representatives from Downey’s own great and good Aerospace Legacy Foundation, a nonprofit which works very hard to preserve and spread the special history and legacy of the Angeleno aerospace industry we GLASers helped build (and maintain and rebuild) to lift us above our smog-drenched skies to the wondrous stars beyond.
So our ASNT-GLAS Spring and our entire 2013-2014 year, which saw us begin by taking a ride to Mars aboard “Curiosity” with JPL and Bosco’s own Tim O’Donnell and then continue our flight into space with Votaw Precision Technologies and its president Scott Wallace, will fittingly conclude with a “blast-off” into summer on the solstice itself, June 21, from the California Science Center downtown with Endeavour. So mark your calendars for that “departure” date! More details will be forthcoming in the next month, but we will have the Endeavour Pavilion all to ourselves for a special few hours that evening for touring, socializing, dining, raffling, and of course, honoring— including honoring our second annual class of special ASNT-GLAS student scholarship awardees under our Women’s, Veterans and Military Initiatives. In addition to continuing our named scholarships in honor of Marybeth Miceli and Ricky Morgan for female and veteran/military students, respectively, we are also proud to continue our named women’s scholarships in honor of Kristy Davis-Jones, our first female ASNT-GLAS Chair, and Brianna Buchanan, our second female ASNT-GLAS Chair.
It’s not cheap to book an evening with Endeavour, so to help underwrite our (extra-)Special Event and our student scholarships, which include complimentary tickets for recipients and their families, we hope we can count on Sponsors to be generous.
Sincerely,
Paul Cole Padilla
ASNT-GLAS Chair, 2013-2014
asnt@boscotech.edu
paulcolepadilla@gmail.com
(310) 508-7120 (cell)
(626) 940-2114 (Bosco)
"ASNT exists to create a safer world by promoting the profession and technologies of nondestructive testing." –ASNT Mission Statement
ASNT-GLAS is proud to be a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
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