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On a Sunday afternoon in April 1995,
former Detective Roger Rodriguez
hosted a Transit Police reunion at a
restaurant in Bradenton Beach,
Florida. The name of the restaurant
was the Beach House, located right
on Bradenton Beach. Roger sent
letters about this reunion to
various former members throughout
the state, who in turn spread the
word around to people they knew in
the areas where they lived. This was
the 2nd Transit Police reunion. Nick
Catello, another former detective,
had hosted a reunion in July 1994 on
the east coast of Florida in Boca
Raton. Fourteen people attended this
reunion at the Crab House
Restaurant.
When we arrived at the restaurant, I
was very much surprised to see the
amount of people who came from all
over the State of Florida to attend
this luncheon. Louie Cosentino and
Freddy Amatrano flew down from NY
for the day. In all there were about
110 people that attended. Before we
knew it 4 hours had passed and the
group was breaking up and starting
to head home.
On the one and a half hour drive
home I was discussing with Freddy
Mack and our wives how great it was
seeing everybody after about six
years. I had thought if this amount
of people traveled from all over the
state to attend an afternoon
reunion, I wondered if they would
also be willing to attend a weekend
reunion. At this point the seed was
planted in my mind to get a weekend
reunion going for sometime in the
future.
Within the next couple of days I
contacted Roger and told him of my
plans. I had asked him if he would
share his list of names with me,
which he gracefully did. My
intentions were to find out the
names and addresses of all the
retiree's living in Florida. For
about the next 15 months I worked to
compile a database of over 300 names
and addresses.
It was now time to put a weekend
reunion together. I knew exactly
what I wanted to do and where I
wanted to have it. I discussed my
plans with Woody (Bill Wood) and he
agreed to help me. We contracted the
Granada Inn in Ormond Beach,
Florida, The reunion was set for the
weekend of August 8th- 10th, 1997.
Ormond Beach is located a few miles
north of Daytona Beach. We
originally contracted to block out
50 rooms for the weekend, hoping to
fill them. We also contracted the
hotel to serve us breakfast on
Saturday and Sunday and to have a
banquet on Saturday night.
We sent out over 300 letters to
retiree's just living in Florida. We
also sent a few letters to people in
New York we thought might like to
attend. Frank Crisa also ran
numerous articles of the up coming
reunion in the retiree's newsletter.
The response was great. Many people
from New York and other parts of the
U.S. were interested in attending.
Dave Ingram, a retiree living in the
Ormond Beach area contacted me to
see if he could help out in any way.
He mentioned that he worked at a
local upscale golf course and could
arrange Tee times and special rates
for our group if we were interested.
I immediately took him up on his
offer.
The response for the weekend was so
great we had to go back to the hotel
looking for more rooms. They gave us
more rooms without any problem. The
only thing was they wouldn't be able
to feed a group as large as ours. So
the hotel made arrangements with TGI
Fridays, which was across the street
from the hotel for breakfast, and at
another hotel for the Saturday night
banquet and a Hawaiian show. The
Ramada Inn Hotel, where the banquet
was held was about 4 miles from the
hotel where we were staying. The
Granada Inn Hotel would provide
buses to take us there and back.
Chief, Thomas O'Rourke, the first
chief of the department attended
this reunion and addressed the group
at the banquet.
The reunion weekend went over well.
The Transit Police took over the
Granada Inn and there was not a room
to be had. Over the course of the
weekend many of the people played
golf, hung out at the pool or on the
beach and just enjoyed being with
each other. Before the weekend was
over the group let it be known that
they wanted to have another Florida
reunion in 1998.
The 1998 Florida reunion was held at
the Ramada Inn Hotel in Daytona
Beach August 7th-9th . This was
another good turn out. At this
reunion Dave Ingram arranged a mixed
golf scramble, and we named it "The
Steele Dust Scramble". The scramble
went over very well with many of our
group taking part in it. Trophies
were presented to the 1st and 2nd
place teams and a "Horses Butt"
trophy was presented to the last
place team. The golfers also won
various other prizes.
During the course of this weekend
Bill McKechnie had suggested to me
that we may want to consider having
a "Champions Cup" trophy with the
names of the 1st place teams from
all the scrambles. Thinking it was a
good idea we purchased the trophy.
The trophy now has the names of the
1st place winners since 1998
engraved on it.
The 1999 reunion was again held in
Daytona Beach, August 13th-15th at
the same Ramada Inn Hotel. The
reunions seem to be getting bigger
and better. Again the people that
attended indicated that they wanted
to do it again for 2000, but wanted
to change the location.
The 2000 reunion was held at the
Holiday Inn Hotel & Suites,
Sept 8th -10th. The hotel is located
on Longboat Key, Fl an Island off
the coast of Sarasota. From the
feedback we've received, this was
the best reunion to date. Again the
people indicated to have a reunion
in 2001.
When the idea of a weekend reunion
was first thought of I never dreamed
it would turn into a yearly event. I
honestly thought if the first one
went well we might have another in 3
to 5 years. The people who have
attended all the reunions have been
great with positive feedback and
their kind words. There is a lot of
work putting these weekends
together, but in the end it has been
well worth it. As long as The Lord
is good to me and the committee we
will keep the reunions going. This
is all in "Keeping the Spirit of
the Transit Police Alive"
Louie Hollander |
