Lou,
I am loathe to respond on the internet to anything because, like you have done with Larry, it usually ends up as a mud slinging contest and I have little stomach for that, but I feel that you've made this personal and your post deserves response.
You cautioned Larry about publicizing this stuff, Larry didn't publicize anything, Rodney did, he talked about his wife’s indiscretions in his posting of the letter expelling him from the NBRSA. a few weeks ago.
A week or so ago you sent out a private email to hundreds of people that was a copy of Audrey's rant letter, the letter you sent out was a copy of the original rant not a copy off of the internet, how did you get that? How did you think that sending that out would help anything ? What was your purpose in finding that rant letter and republishing it? It is full of inaccuracies and twisted truths, and serves no purpose. So please explain why you would do that ?
Your statement that nobody has tried to remedy this situation is also pure BS. I suppose that you are currently talking to Rodney and he is telling you what he want's you to hear and not the facts, thats the problem!!
The truth is that Jack Neary, Director, North East Region has been talking to Rodney, and to you, trying to work out Rodney’s re-instatement. Jack has talked to Rodney after both of our board meetings.
I've chosen to not try to talk to Rodney directly because I have a hard time talking to somebody that lies to me. At the East West shoot in St Louis, after Wayne explained to Rodney exactly what Rodney needed to do and who he needed to talk to, to make peace with Team members, Rodney came to me, he started the conversation by lying to me about what happened during the transition from him and Audrey to the new team. He did not get a temper tantrum from me, as you say. The conversation happened in the loading barn at St Louis and there were many witnesses to that brief conversation. They can testify to how it went, there was no temper tantrum! During that conversation Rodney told me that he could tell from reading Nancy’s and Pam's resumes that they were not fit for and couldn't do the job! Because I consider somebody's resume to be personal and private information, and I did not send their resumes to anybody except the Directors, I asked Rodney how he got those resume's. He refused to answer me, when I asked him the second time he turned and walked away.
Prior to Jack’s attempt, Chris Harris , acting as an intermediary between us, was talking to Rodney trying to workout a settlement before the Directors meeting in St Louis.
In an effort to resolve this, Chris spent endless hours of discussion with Rodney, Chris Harris at one time offered to bring Rodney and I together for a face-to-face meeting and he offered to pay the expenses and buy our airline tickets for us to meet on neutral ground. I accepted Chris's very gracious, and generous offer but Rodney would have no part of it.
Rodney was encouraged to go to nationals at StLouis, he was signed up for them and choose to not go to there either! In your eyes, does all this effort qualify as “not reaching out to Rodney”?
I really want to pick up on a point you made: “The NBRSA was running fine until Gene took over as new president”. That is a very broad statement and it obviously implies that everything has tanked due to my involvement. So here is what our membership needs to understand. It is now clear to me that the management/leadership style of our previous president and myself are very different. I am not going to suggest here that the one style is better than the other but I can assure you that, based on what we have uncovered since the transition, Rodney and Audrey required a lot more supervision than what was provided. I am not going to regurgitate the gory details as they have been told and retold at this stage. And I can assure you there is much more to tell if need be. Rodney and Audrey appeared to have run the organization exactly the way they wanted to, with very little authority or ratification from our previous president or board. When I took over, I saw it as my responsibility to act prudently on behalf of the members and make sure that their actions were appropriate and approved from time to time.
The Browns, and by that, I mean Audrey and Rodney, had a highly unusual amount of control over the running of the NBRSA. The very first time that I asked Audrey for a policy to be formulated for subsequent board approval she would not accept any outside intervention. And that is where the crap started to hit the fan. That simple request apparently caused Audrey to suddenly and unexpectedly resigne. I can say this with confidence as Rodney admitted all this to Chris Harris. So I am not blaming the Browns for their insecurity, but I am suggesting that their refusal to work with the board and myself and subsequently shutting us out of regular communication suddenly plummeted the management of the NBRSA into somewhat of a chaotic state. One thing led to the next. They made plenty assumptions that were inaccurate and based their decisions and actions on these inaccurate assumptions.
So where we are today is not at all ideal and I wish that instead of dealing with all of this we were discussing more forward thinking ideas. I need people like yourself to be more productive and to start having fun and not working hard to tear down this organization . But looking back and knowing what I know today, I am not at all surprised that we have had to endure such and massive amount of bickering, rumor mongering, name calling, anger, resentment, and so on. The past is what it is. We cannot do much about that. We have reached out to Rodney and reinstated him in an effort to appease people who feel we were unfair in dismissing him. We took this decision mostly to meet you with your promise to quieten things down and to date we have not seen you change your tune.
There is another matter that needs addressing. There is an underlying accusation that we have done all we can to remove Rodney from the World Team and our sole reason for banishing him from the NBRSA was to achieve this goal. This could not be further from the truth. It is true to say that all team members that attended the meeting at Super Shoot were very concerned about having Rodney on the team, knowing about the huge problems we had uncovered and the circumstances surrounding a most disastrous transition. I think that is very natural. The Team members are spending lots of money to represent the US and they do not need to have a trip half way around the world wrecked with in-fighting. We have had those kind of trips before and they are not pleasant! But I was not in favor of removing Rodney from the team, and after that meeting I choose to do nothing. It was only after Rodney started bad mouthing the organization and riling people up, talking about starting new organizations, going to the IBS and all such that we did start thinking about what our next actions should be to make the problem go away.
Further, you have asked me to step down as president. I serve the members of the NBRSA and at the will of the board of directors. They elected me, and I effectively work for them. If they ask me to step down, I will do so immediately. I took this role on with the expectation that I would be able to move the NBRSA forward. I had no idea that I would be faced with a resignation so early in my tenure, nor did I ever expect that the transition would be so profoundly difficult. No body has ever had so much control over the NBRSA as did Audrey and Rodney. It therefor stands to reason that the transition would be challenging, but I truly expected the outgoing management to be much more helpful, and at the very least, not adversarial.
I think that most people in the NBRSA have had enough of all this, We all need to start acting positively. It is so easy for some to throw rocks at the organization. But sadly those rocks will only serve to hurt everyone. We have a fantastic sport. I am not happy that we have gone through this turmoil this year. It has kept me up many nights. But I am committed to each and every member enjoying this sport and to doing my best to further the cause of the NBRSA. To do that effectively, I need you guys to start thinking about the future and putting this behind us. If there are constructive suggestions coming out of what we have just experienced then let’s hear them and process them with dignity and intelligence.
Gene
I am loathe to respond on the internet to anything because, like you have done with Larry, it usually ends up as a mud slinging contest and I have little stomach for that, but I feel that you've made this personal and your post deserves response.
You cautioned Larry about publicizing this stuff, Larry didn't publicize anything, Rodney did, he talked about his wife’s indiscretions in his posting of the letter expelling him from the NBRSA. a few weeks ago.
A week or so ago you sent out a private email to hundreds of people that was a copy of Audrey's rant letter, the letter you sent out was a copy of the original rant not a copy off of the internet, how did you get that? How did you think that sending that out would help anything ? What was your purpose in finding that rant letter and republishing it? It is full of inaccuracies and twisted truths, and serves no purpose. So please explain why you would do that ?
Your statement that nobody has tried to remedy this situation is also pure BS. I suppose that you are currently talking to Rodney and he is telling you what he want's you to hear and not the facts, thats the problem!!
The truth is that Jack Neary, Director, North East Region has been talking to Rodney, and to you, trying to work out Rodney’s re-instatement. Jack has talked to Rodney after both of our board meetings.
I've chosen to not try to talk to Rodney directly because I have a hard time talking to somebody that lies to me. At the East West shoot in St Louis, after Wayne explained to Rodney exactly what Rodney needed to do and who he needed to talk to, to make peace with Team members, Rodney came to me, he started the conversation by lying to me about what happened during the transition from him and Audrey to the new team. He did not get a temper tantrum from me, as you say. The conversation happened in the loading barn at St Louis and there were many witnesses to that brief conversation. They can testify to how it went, there was no temper tantrum! During that conversation Rodney told me that he could tell from reading Nancy’s and Pam's resumes that they were not fit for and couldn't do the job! Because I consider somebody's resume to be personal and private information, and I did not send their resumes to anybody except the Directors, I asked Rodney how he got those resume's. He refused to answer me, when I asked him the second time he turned and walked away.
Prior to Jack’s attempt, Chris Harris , acting as an intermediary between us, was talking to Rodney trying to workout a settlement before the Directors meeting in St Louis.
In an effort to resolve this, Chris spent endless hours of discussion with Rodney, Chris Harris at one time offered to bring Rodney and I together for a face-to-face meeting and he offered to pay the expenses and buy our airline tickets for us to meet on neutral ground. I accepted Chris's very gracious, and generous offer but Rodney would have no part of it.
Rodney was encouraged to go to nationals at StLouis, he was signed up for them and choose to not go to there either! In your eyes, does all this effort qualify as “not reaching out to Rodney”?
I really want to pick up on a point you made: “The NBRSA was running fine until Gene took over as new president”. That is a very broad statement and it obviously implies that everything has tanked due to my involvement. So here is what our membership needs to understand. It is now clear to me that the management/leadership style of our previous president and myself are very different. I am not going to suggest here that the one style is better than the other but I can assure you that, based on what we have uncovered since the transition, Rodney and Audrey required a lot more supervision than what was provided. I am not going to regurgitate the gory details as they have been told and retold at this stage. And I can assure you there is much more to tell if need be. Rodney and Audrey appeared to have run the organization exactly the way they wanted to, with very little authority or ratification from our previous president or board. When I took over, I saw it as my responsibility to act prudently on behalf of the members and make sure that their actions were appropriate and approved from time to time.
The Browns, and by that, I mean Audrey and Rodney, had a highly unusual amount of control over the running of the NBRSA. The very first time that I asked Audrey for a policy to be formulated for subsequent board approval she would not accept any outside intervention. And that is where the crap started to hit the fan. That simple request apparently caused Audrey to suddenly and unexpectedly resigne. I can say this with confidence as Rodney admitted all this to Chris Harris. So I am not blaming the Browns for their insecurity, but I am suggesting that their refusal to work with the board and myself and subsequently shutting us out of regular communication suddenly plummeted the management of the NBRSA into somewhat of a chaotic state. One thing led to the next. They made plenty assumptions that were inaccurate and based their decisions and actions on these inaccurate assumptions.
So where we are today is not at all ideal and I wish that instead of dealing with all of this we were discussing more forward thinking ideas. I need people like yourself to be more productive and to start having fun and not working hard to tear down this organization . But looking back and knowing what I know today, I am not at all surprised that we have had to endure such and massive amount of bickering, rumor mongering, name calling, anger, resentment, and so on. The past is what it is. We cannot do much about that. We have reached out to Rodney and reinstated him in an effort to appease people who feel we were unfair in dismissing him. We took this decision mostly to meet you with your promise to quieten things down and to date we have not seen you change your tune.
There is another matter that needs addressing. There is an underlying accusation that we have done all we can to remove Rodney from the World Team and our sole reason for banishing him from the NBRSA was to achieve this goal. This could not be further from the truth. It is true to say that all team members that attended the meeting at Super Shoot were very concerned about having Rodney on the team, knowing about the huge problems we had uncovered and the circumstances surrounding a most disastrous transition. I think that is very natural. The Team members are spending lots of money to represent the US and they do not need to have a trip half way around the world wrecked with in-fighting. We have had those kind of trips before and they are not pleasant! But I was not in favor of removing Rodney from the team, and after that meeting I choose to do nothing. It was only after Rodney started bad mouthing the organization and riling people up, talking about starting new organizations, going to the IBS and all such that we did start thinking about what our next actions should be to make the problem go away.
Further, you have asked me to step down as president. I serve the members of the NBRSA and at the will of the board of directors. They elected me, and I effectively work for them. If they ask me to step down, I will do so immediately. I took this role on with the expectation that I would be able to move the NBRSA forward. I had no idea that I would be faced with a resignation so early in my tenure, nor did I ever expect that the transition would be so profoundly difficult. No body has ever had so much control over the NBRSA as did Audrey and Rodney. It therefor stands to reason that the transition would be challenging, but I truly expected the outgoing management to be much more helpful, and at the very least, not adversarial.
I think that most people in the NBRSA have had enough of all this, We all need to start acting positively. It is so easy for some to throw rocks at the organization. But sadly those rocks will only serve to hurt everyone. We have a fantastic sport. I am not happy that we have gone through this turmoil this year. It has kept me up many nights. But I am committed to each and every member enjoying this sport and to doing my best to further the cause of the NBRSA. To do that effectively, I need you guys to start thinking about the future and putting this behind us. If there are constructive suggestions coming out of what we have just experienced then let’s hear them and process them with dignity and intelligence.
Gene
Last edited:
