April 2025 FLA President's Message

“Our retiree members play a more vital role than ever in keeping our organization strong and advancing our shared professional goals across the state.  This month’s president’s message is dedicated to our retirees, and who better to honor them than our lifetime achievement awardee and past president, Gene Coppola. Why Not? Take it away, Gene!”

Thanks Jorge. Hi everyone.

Since we last spoke, the retiree bandwagon has been moving right along. I received some great feedback on this whole initiative so there is definitely interest out there. I’m not surprised. There’s a whole network of us itching to do more and frankly, we just don’t want to be forgotten! We’ve got more to give, and we can do it WITHOUT politics, time restrictions or other work-related distractions.

Big news first, our first annual “Retiree Social” will be held Wednesday, May 14th, 6:30 pm-8:30 pm at the hotel’s…Presidential suite! Yes, this hotspot is being made available by our gracious President, Jorge Perez. There will be plenty of top-shelf house wines, fabulous soft drinks and yes, cheap hors d'oeuvres/ Privacy will give us a chance to meet each other without restaurant interruptions and by those…non-retirees nearby.

At our get-together, besides learning how we can help each other, we’ll also have the chance to form our own FLA Membership Group! All we need are names from five current FLA members. This will help establish our presence in the Association as well as our commitment to ourselves to do more.

So…
….if you’re retired and still want to be active in FLA
…if you just want to volunteer without dealing with all that political nonsense
…if you want to help plan programs, events and other retiring activities
…if you are retired, about to be retired, planning on retiring or just want to retire

Join us on 5/14, 6:30 PM at the Presidential Suite! 
(Room number to be announced at the Conference Registration Desk.) 

This would be a great chance to meet your colleagues, share some laughs, share some stories and look to the future. There’s a lot of us out there so please, RSVP me at genecopp@gmail.com so we (Anne Casey, Mary Jane Little and  myself) can make sure this will be one of your best nights at the Conference. Happy retirement!