Orca Lodge Anniversary Observations

The 2003 Lodge Dinner took place at the Luther Burbank Arts and Garden Center, in Santa Rosa.  There were a hundred and eight people in attendance.  Seventy four members and thirty four non-members. The catered food was not only plentiful, but of excellent quality. During the course of the evening Logo jackets, polo shirts, sweat shirts and more were awarded to lucky ticket holders. There was even a fund raising auction. As this was the 10th Anniversary of the founding of Orca Lodge, a special lodge flap was issued and members could purchase up to three for $5.00 each. A special effort was made to get all the Lodge Chiefs from the past in attendance. Lane Kasselman/1994, Tom Rathbun/1997, Jason Yarnall/1999, and Michael Buxton/2001 & 2002 were able to attend and showed the Spirit of the Arrow and Leadership to the Lodge still live on, even many years later. Traveling from Reno to join in on the festivities were Ross Armstrong, Section W3B Chief as well as Steve Davidek and Everett Holm, W3B Adviser and Associate Adviser.

Starting in late 2013, Orca Lodge was discussing our goals for our 20^th anniversary year.  First, we wanted to continue to be recognized as a Journey to Excellence – Gold lodge.  Next we wanted to continue to grow, both in our presence in the Council, and at the Section level.  One of the big ways that we accomplished this was to take on the ownership of the Leave No Trace – Outdoor Ethics program for the Council.  We trained several of our youth to be LNT trainers and made ourselves available to the Units in the Council, and to the Section Conclave.  In addition, we began our site selection process for hosting the 2015 W-3N Centennial Conclave.  Several sites were investigated, but ultimately Sonoma Raceway was chosen.  In cooperation with the Raceway, we will be able to host our Conclave alongside of the Indy Car Series finale race weekend in 2015.

At the end of the year we held our Lodge Dinner with a packed house at the Presbyterian Church of the Roses.  Our year was complete with the continuation of our status of JTE Gold.