Jim Reed to Tom Curtis: I thought I was the Lone Ranger!

From: Jim Reed
Sent: Wednesday, December 07, 2005 6:57 PM
Subject: I thought I was the Lone Ranger!

Tom, it's been interesting to read some of your recent e-mails. If I didn't know better, I would suppose "Tom Curtis" was my pen name. I certainly can relate to the torment you feel at discovery of a retirement system that turns out to be a retiree's headhunter instead of his caretaker. What a disgrace to our profession.

I sent an e-mail a couple of days ago explaining that fellow CORE member Hank Gavarkavich and I are still working so the meeting on Thursday is tough timing for us. However, we both are Concerned Ohio Retired Educators and support your efforts for all of the retirees who are being clobbered currently and the actives who are sitting ducks for "down the road" but have not wised up to the speedbumps being laid down for their retirement by the STRS's fiscal idiocy.

My hope would be that soon both actives and retirees will sense and appreciate the efforts of old-regime STRS critics and new Board members Dennis Leone, and John Lazarus and CORE pioneer agitators like Tom Curtis and Kathie Bracy.

I am attaching a letter I have written to the editor at the Lancaster "Eagle-Gazette, " Fairfield County's largest newspaper. Though I have had several "rounds" with the "E-G" I've been told it would be published soon. Over the course of the past four-five years I've had more than a half dozen letters published in the "E-G" and the "Dispatch." I have not received any rebuttals and that surprises me a bit because I've been pretty caustic.

Don't give in, Tom. You're a hero to many of us and I believe there will be an appreciable increase in the number of "enlightened" actives and retirees. There are just too many intelligent and fair-minded people in our profession to keep their heads in the sand.

Jim N. Reed
Retirement Class of "98
CORE Member and Supporter