This year’s annual meeting was held at the Boulangerie Nantaise on Sunday, November 4. Instead of the usual potluck, this year we had a restaurant-prepared dinner. Our attendance increased about 50% over last year’s meeting, so it appears that our members prefer a restaurant dinner over a potluck
We were honored to have one of our original members, Frances Nostrand, attend. Tish Van der Miel introduced Frances and talked about the accomplishments of Frances and her husband, Howard. The two of them played a large role in getting our sister city association started. Later, Howard and Frances donated $500,000 to the University of Washington to create an endowed professorship. The professorship emphasizes the connection between language competence and cultural competence. As if this weren’t enough, Frances Nostrand later took the lead in organizing a wonderful exhibition of French trompe-l’œil paintings from Le Cercle de Lyon. This group of talented painters held their exhibition at the Frye Art Gallery. The exhibition was made possible because of contacts Frances made when she was studying in Nantes.
Other special guests included Mariette Cassourret, the President of the Nantes-Seattle Sister City Association, who is here with a group of high school exchange students from Nantes, and Colton Carothers, who was our Young Ambassador to Nantes last year.
On the business side, we elected two new board members, Jean-Loup Baer and Emily Boardway, and reelected Tom Bennett, Marie-Pierre Koban, Jean Leblon, and Susan Hulbert to the Board. Judy Deignan, Pamela-Ann Hughes, Chantal Sullivan, and Susan Wolf are continuing board members whose terms will expire next year