SWIFT BOAT SAILORS ASSOCIATION

SATURDAY JUNE 27, 2009

FOLLOWING THE BUSINESS MEETING

        The Swift Boat Sailors Association is sponsoring a Writers’ Conference after the business meeting on Saturday, June 27, 2009.  This is an opportunity for Swifties and their families to listen to talks by our authors, ask questions about the writing process or about the individual books, followed by a book signing at the Ship’s Store.   This is the first time an event of this type has been offered at an SBSA reunion, and we hope you will attend.  The participants are:

1.      Gary Blinn, a Nebraska native, graduated in 1966 from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland and the Harvard Business School.  He was O in C of PCF 97 in Vietnam, and is the author of Confession to a Deaf God Memoir of a Mekong River Rat.  He is a former international banker and owns a beer distributorship in Nebraska.

2.      Virgil Erwin III, resides in San Diego and is a retired Vice President of Worldwide Sales for Entegris, Inc.  He comes from a career Navy family, and served as O in C of PCF 67 in Cat Lo, Vietnam, 1968-69.  Virg is a Board member of the Swift Boat Sailors Association, the Vietnam Unit Memorial and the Admiral Roy F. Hoffmann Foundation, and is the author of Cat Lo A Memoir of Invincible Youth.

3.      Raul “Bean” Herrera, is the President of the Swift Boat Sailors Association.  He served aboard PCF 79 as the radarman/radioman in 1967.  Raul is a design technician for Dannenbaum Engineering in Houston.  He is author of “Swift Boats in Operation Market Time” (Vietnam Magazine) and Skunk Alpha.

4.      John O’Neill comes from a Navy family (his father was a distinguished Naval aviator in World War II and retired from active duty as an admiral).  John is a 1967 honors graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, received his J.D. from the University of Texas in 1973, and clerked for Justice William H. Rehnquist on the U.S. Supreme Court from 1974-75.  John was the O in C of PCF 94 at An Thoi in 1969.  He is in private law practice in Houston, Texas, where he specializes in large-scale commercial litigation.  He is the bestselling author of Unfit for Command.

5.      Lynn Salsi, is the wife of Swifty (1969-1970) Burke Salsi .  Lynn has a B.A. in journalism and an M.A. in writing.  Lynn has an extensive background in writing (20 books to her credit thus far), including Firefight on Vietnam Brown Water.  Lynn was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for biography in 2008.  Lynn’s web site is www.lsalsi.com.

6.      Weymouth Symmes is a Montana native who served on PCFs 56, 93 and 6 from 1969-70 as a radarman second class.  He holds B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Montana and is a retired banker.  He currently serves on the Board of the Admiral Roy F. Hoffmann Foundation.  He is the author of War on the Rivers A Swift Boat Sailor’s Chronicle of the Battle for the Mekong Delta and This is Latch The Story of Rear Admiral Roy F. Hoffmann. Wey’s web site is www.warontherivers.com.