Message from the President, March 2022

I’m happy to report that the GBA Board voted this month to make our April Board and membership meetings live. So we’ll have a virtual membership meeting on March 17th and our April 21st meeting (the annual joint meeting of the GBA and the 24th Judicial District Bar) will be live back at Starmount Country Club. Also, our pre-summer events (like the May picnic) can be live again. My goal was to start live meetings back in September – we didn’t get there of course, but at least we can see the end of the Covid era and get in a round of live meetings before we break for the summer. We’ve all missed the opportunity to get together so I’m very glad we’ll be seeing each other in real life at least once and then on a regular basis starting in the fall. We want to make health and safety our priority (of course) and will keep an eye out for new variants and other developments regarding Covid, but our fingers are crossed that the pandemic disruptions will soon be behind us.

Our February meeting (on Zoom of course) featured Rick French, the CEO of French West Vaughn. I think he was GBA’s first executive/movie producer/sports team owner and Rick Hall board member, so lots to talk about. At our March meeting, we’ll hear from Winston McGregor of the Guilford Education Alliance – promises to be another interesting program. Also at the March meeting, we’ll be presenting the Centennial/Community Service Award – thanks to Jim Bryan and his committee for all the work on that (and our other awards of course).

Our nominating committee led by our immediate past President Lisa Williford (Arthur) has been hard at work on a slate of next year’s new officers and board members – the membership will be able to vote on all that in April. I know it will be a strong leadership team (led by next year’s President Judge Marcus Shields) to get GBA “back to normal”, so stay tuned for more.

Thanks for being a part of the GBA and see you at the March membership meeting.

Desmond Sheridan
GBA President, 2021-2022