A Brief
History of N.A.S.S
and how they came to exist
by our Founding Father and Creator of NASS List, Paul Tegler -
1/02 (last updated 02/02/2008)
It all started sometime early summer
1998... with a squabble on another email list. That particular email group was
more generalized being dedicated more so to ALL things Truimph automobile related. A
ruckus broke out as a result of the 'TR guys' 'looking down their noses' at
the Triumph Spitfire and GT6.
The 'big TR' (TR2, 3, 4, 250, and
TR6) guys seem to feel they were the 'last of' or the 'only real' Triumphs.
Sounds funny.... considering many more Spitfires and GT6's were produced
and sold over the years than any TR series. Also consider the idea that the
production run of Spitfires lasted nearly twice as long as any TR6 and
were still in production right up to the financial demise of Triumph as a motor vehicle
manufacturer under British Leyland.
I was surprised to find there wasn't
a single national or International organization centered on these particular vehicles,
while many existed for the variety of physically larger TR models that Triumph
built over the years. Still none existed speceifically for the Spitfire and/or GT6.
Believing I wasn't the only one
sick of the bickering and attitudes on that list, I went out on a limb and started an
email list of my own specifically for the Spitfire and GT6 people. I
wanted a list that talked about the cars I was interested in, and not have to deal with
personal problems and member conflicts, on a 'car' list. No 'nose
thumbers'.
Mid 1998, I found OneList and
setup the NASS list. The North American Spitfire Squadron was born. In the flurry
of internet business buyouts in the very late 1990's, OneList was purchased
by Egroups... who was eventually bought up by Yahoo. Yahoo...what
a pain. OneList was first chosen, as there were NO advertisements included in the
emails. Egroups did add them, but you could selectively turn them off, with only
minor loss of system/list features. Then came Yahoo. The headers, of the on-line public site and
footers of every email take up more space in advertising than the mail messages themselves
do. What a pain!.
Regardless of Yahoo's growing pains,
early summer of 2000 saw the largest infusion of new members into our email group.
Word-of-mouth at car shows, advertising of our group via members own websites, and printed
advertising and magazine articles about the NASS email list, resulted in the membership
jumping by over 300 people in under a year.
By summer's end 2000, this
amicable group of people wanted to put faces to names. Talk on
the list started to infer a 'club' might be a good way to keep the ball
rolling. Volunteers helped generate a set of by-laws. Drafts were edited, and finally voted into
existence by the then current NASS list membership. Nominations for organizational officials
were accepted on the email list, campaign
speeches were submitted and posted for the listers to get to know who were willing to
dedicate some of their precious spare time to help run things. Elections were held by the
list late summer. And yes folks it IS true..... I did
decline all nominations ( railroad attempts ) to be the first President of
the NASS-club. November 2000 saw a set of 'club' 'officials elected. A President, Vice-President, Membership Chairman, Treasurer, and Secretary were
voted into office.
Jan 2001, saw the organizational
efforts starting to accelerate concerning a first ever national club meeting. Aptly
called, a 'Spit-Together'. A 2001 Spit-Together was held on the 4th of July in Knoxville
TN. Although not supplied by the club, the drawing for a GT6 giveaway (Yes, the
magazine gave away a real full size, running GT6) was also held. The GT6 was used on the
N.A.S.S club. parade float which traveled along in the parade with many attending club
members and their cars.
To counter Yahoo's strangle hold on the
archives of all the email communications, this site was created to support a searchable archive. Two years or programming,
9,000+ lines worth of CGI/Perl scripts, having to re-learn yet another database program (and
then how to access them from a web page), add another 2,000 lines of JavaScript, 1,000+
edited images and icons, and you have the start of the current stand-alone
nasshq.org, designed to suppor the NASS list. From there this site grew to also support the 'NASS-club' activities and it's members as well as
the primary function of supporting the Forums.
Born from the NASS email
list, a 'NASS-club' formed and became an Internationally recognized
premiere organization.
There are over 1,300+ active email list members world wide.
Well I think I've said enough
for now.
In closing... I'd just
like to say ... Thank you.
Thank you one and all for all your support through NASS's growing
years, and proving yourselves to be one of the most amicable groups of people I've ever
had the pleasure of being associated with. And yes...Thank you all for tolerating
ME!
-- Founder / Creator NASS
List 1998 --
Paul A. Tegler, Jr.
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