Welcome to the home of the Minnesota Navy League COUNCIL
The Minnesota Navy League Council is a Council of the Navy League of the United States. The Minnesota Navy League Council is a nonprofit civilian organization that supports the U.S. Navy and the Coast Guard. Through national and local programs, the Navy League of the United States provides a powerful voice to educate the public and Congress on the importance of our Sea Services to our nation’s defense.
The Minnesota Navy League Council hosted the 2024 Midwest Region Annual Navy League Conference April 19-20 at the Minneapolis Hilton, 1001 S. Marquette Ave. Minneapolis, MN 55403.
The following is a message from Regional President Ward Cook.
I want to thank the Minnesota Navy League for an amazing weekend! They did a wonderful job of welcoming us to the largest greater metropolitan city in the Midwest Region. A BIG thank you to Bill James and Joe Fraser especially for their leadership in putting together this regional conference. Also, a thank you goes out to our National President, Chris Townsend.
Our Saturday conference began with an amazing military history lesson from Randell Dietch who is Executive Director of the Minnesota Military and Veterans Museum. He told us about the history of the USS WARD (DD-139) gun which we saw on Friday: https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/museums/nmusn/explore/photography/ships-us/ships-usn-w/uss-ward-dd-139-apd-16.html. What an amazing story that its gun was the first to fire on the Japanese at Pearl Harbor. The gun is currently located in front of the Capital building in St. Paul (which we also toured on Friday) but will soon be located at the museum’s new facility at Camp Ripley in Little Falls, MN.
Check them out at: https://www.mnmilitarymuseum.org/ or their new website https://www.mnvetmuseum.org/
I then gave summary of where we stand as a region. The good news and bad news. The good news is that many of our strong councils continue to grow and will meet or exceed my 10% membership goal I set forth for each council this year. We also have a new council that is working on forming in Northwest Arkansas. We will continue to monitor their progress and assist as we can. Unfortunately, there are two councils (South Dakota, and Mid-Missouri) that need our assistance and our regional leadership team, and those in these areas are working to keep these councils alive.
We also had a wonderful talk/discussion with our Navy League National President, Chris Townsend. He highlighted some of the progress that has been made over the past year and gave us highlights of things that are working across the country and how we can apply them to our councils here the Midwest. We discussed our founding principles of Educating, Advocating, and Support. This rolled into a robust discussion about the need to support recruiting in all facets of what we do. It was a truly amazing opportunity to discuss these important issues with our National President.
Jim Jones from the Sea Cadets then spoke about our councils can support and work together with the Sea Cadets to build up some of their recruiting numbers. We also discussed collaboration with each council in the Midwest to provide more opportunities for the Sea Cadets. There was a final discussion about how to possibly include Sea Cadets as Navy League members and Jim said maybe create a new category once they are Seniors or getting ready to graduate. We discussed improving the knowledge of what Navy League does amongst the Sea Cadets as well.
Our Keynote Speaker was author and national security expert, Jon Olsen. His presentation was focused on how we better equip and support our Navy today for the possible missions ahead. He focused on the fact that continuing issues with shipbuilding, Congressional budgets, and a lack of forethought are handicapping our potential. What a phenomenal presentation! I was blown away. If you would like to see more or read anyone of his books, here is a link to his page: https://us.macmillan.com/author/jrolson.
Our afternoon began with two wonderful presentations from Brian Skon, and Bill James. Bill went first and discussed best practices in how to grow membership and then touched on our legislative priorities as a Navy League and why they are important to all of us. Then, Brian Skon discussed using how to maximize special events for membership and how the Minnesota Council best supports their adopted units. Brian blew us away with the number of things the Minnesota Council does that no one talks about. BZ again to those in the Minnesota Council.
The final presentation of the day was regarding NROTC from Capt. Abigail Hutchins, CO University of Minnesota NROTC Unit. This was a fascinating look into the life of a cadet. I believe everyone learned a great deal that they didn’t know before.
A big THANK YOU to all those who attended the conference and we look forward to the National Convention in San Diego this June.
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Check out the stories on our News and Information Tab News Stories — Navy League of Minnesota (navyleaguemn.org) to read about the GREAT things our Adopted Units and Council is doing.
