Dear GGR Members,
Happy New Year, first Nugget article of 2025. First of all, I wanted to share that this is the 65th Anniversary of GGR and the 70th Anniversary of PCA. These are very significant milestones for our Club, and we have many exciting things planned for you. All the Directors have great events planned for all of us this year – Motoring, Autocross, Track, Concours, and Social events! Here a photo of us, hard at work at the first meeting of the year.
I also wanted to introduce Ryan David Holmes as the GGR Creative Director (he is the one in front of the projector screen, next to Jim Tierney). This is a new non-voting addition to our Board of Directors to help with all aspects of the Club’s visual identity and branding. Ryan is fluent in graphic, web, photography, video, basically a multimedia guru. So stay tuned for all the fresh ideas that Ryan and the rest of the Board want to implement this year, a lot of enthusiasm and energy!
Speaking of tradition, we have an old tradition in GGR that will get revitalized, it is called The Dummkopf Award. Just like it sounds in German, it’s not a complimentary word, roughly translating to calling someone a blockhead. Let me explain the rules…
The award is a physical trophy that the Club owns that is bestowed onto a member that has “done something dumb and got caught”. The person that is in possession of the Dummkopf needs to catch another member doing something deserving of the Award, that is the only way you can get rid of the award. So the pleasure of the game is not just receiving it, but way more importantly, is to be able to award it to the next member. Historically, the award can change hands a few times in a single day, or it can be with someone for many, many months.
The award is given as a good-natured teasing, never meant to be insulting or mean. Over the decades, some members have received the award multiple times and it was treated as a badge of honor. Per the records, Terry Zaccone and Bill Patton are tied at each receiving the Dummkopf four times. So this is how it works.
To start off the New Year, I’d like to announce that The Dummkopf Award is going from Himanshu Patel to Ed Hunter. Last Saturday, we had our annual Volunteers and Awards Luncheon at Canepa. It was a wonderful event, surrounded by some of the most amazing cars this planet has to offer. So I invited Ed the month prior, making sure that he and his family would be attending. What I kept from Ed is that the Board was going to honor him with the Olen Creech Award, one of the highest honors GGR can give for all his years of service. So the event starts, but an hour into it, I realized Ed and his family had not checked in yet. So I call him to see what’s going on. Turns out he was out driving around in the twisties. I said “why aren’t you here?” Ed said “I thought it was a dinner event!”
For most people, this could be an understandable mistake, but for Ed, he hosted this lunch event for the past two years as President of GGR, once at Canepa and once at Blackhawk – it was HIS event! He even remarked “yea, I wondered why the invite said the doors opened at 11:00 for a dinner event…” At that point I was rolling on the ground in laughter. If you look back one paragraph, the event even contains the word “Luncheon”!!! So it is because of this, that Ed is the newest Dummkopf recipient. Ok Ed, we’ll get that trophy to you, now it’s up to you to pass it on to another worthy member. Let the tradition live on!
Sincerely,
Howard Yao
president@pca-ggr.org