2020 ORPCA Board of Directors
Steve Miller, President
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I can hardly believe that this is my 16th year as an Oregon Region Porsche Club member. As of this writing I am completing my second year as your vice president. In a few weeks I’ll assume the presidency of the Oregon Porsche Region!
Wow, 2019 came and went just like that. It was a very busy year with the club participating in dozens of events. The events included the Portland Auto Show, Historic Races at PIR, Forest Grove Concourse, several Autocross weekends, Tech Sessions, German Palooza, Rose Cup, Porsche Beaverton launch of the new Porsche 992, Maryhill Loops Hill Tour, Northwest Passage, Christmas celebration, socials, and quarterly mixers. I’m sure I’ve missed something.
2020 looks to be even busier. We’re planning to continue all of the above events will be adding more driving opportunities and tours. We are, currently, offering a European River cruise which should be incredible. Winnie and I have done the Viking River Cruise from Amsterdam to Budapest. It’s a trip that you will never forget!
Oregon Porsche Club of America celebrates its 60th anniversary. We will begin planning something very special to commemorate this milestone. Watch the communications disseminated by the club as we will be calling for volunteers to help with the planning and execution of this very important celebration.
Larry Hannan, Past President
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For my wife Cathy and me, the Porsche experience started with a trip to a car dealership in 2005 to look at a special edition of an Audi TT. Sitting on the show room floor along with the Audi was a Guards Red 1995 Porsche Carrera cabriolet. After taking both cars out for a test drive it was obvious which was the better car. I asked my wife which of the cars she preferred, and she pointed to the red Porsche. We took the Carrera home that day and joined PCA and ORPCA that same year.
Like a lot of new members, the first ORPCA event we attended was a Saturday arrive and drive. That was followed by a few Wednesday dinners and some more arrive and drives. In 2006 the Porsche Parade was in Portland and I volunteered to help. That really began our journey in the Porsche Club. Over the years we hosted Wednesday dinners, helped with events like the clubs 50th anniversary in 2009, the 911 50th anniversary at Skamania Lodge, car corrals at Concours d’Elegance in Forrest Grove and club tours. My involvement with ORPCA increased in 2015 when I was nominated to serve on the ORPCA Board of Directors and stepped up a bit more when I became President in 2017.
While involvement in the club is time consuming, the benefit is meeting and working with some amazing people, who own and drive some amazing cars.
In 2018 the benefit of meeting members worked out for us in a different way. With the commitment to attend events as President came a lot of driving. We decided that we didn’t want to add that many miles to the 95 Carrera. Maybe that was just an excuse to go looking for another car, but looking I went. The stars aligned because a car I had admired for a couple of years came up for sale. The car was ORPCA member Joe Kelly’s 2008 Porsche Design Edition Cayman S. Knowing Joe and how he maintained his cars made the purchase easy.
The year 2020 will mark our 15th anniversary with the Oregon Region of the Porsche Club of America. The purchase of a Porsche and joining ORPCA was a great decision. We are looking forward to many more years of playing with cars.
Peg Ryan, Vice President
[email protected], [email protected]
This will be my 6th year in the club and I am excited to become your Vice President. I am active in almost all the events we do from autocross, tours, SUV events, socials and many others. One of the other events I enjoy is our spring clean event where you can get those bothersome nicks and scrapes fixed for very reasonable rates. I have 3 Porsches, a 2016 Midnight Blue Cayenne GTS, a 2016 Sapphire Blue Boxster S and a 2019 Metallic Black 911 4S.
It is also my honor to be able to continue my work as communication director and manage the many formats for communication available to us. From the weekly email blasts, the monthly Anzeiger and the web, I hope you feel like you know what is going on in the club, through one or all of those options.
As usual we have some great events planned for 2020. We will continue many of the same events as usual but look to tweak them to continue to fine tune the operations. We will test some new things as well including paying for your dinners ahead of time with your credit card. If you are willing to help with any of the events or communications vehicles, please let me know as I would love to get some help. Also, don’t hesitate to reach out to me—you can always reach me on email at [email protected] or [email protected].
Carole Hedstrom
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My life has been a slow path to fast cars. Way back in Junior High, I encountered the first Porsche I had ever seen. It was parked next to a friend’s house. I was immediately wowed by the lines and its sleek stance. My friend said, “it’s some German thing and the guy that owns it acts like it the most amazing thing in the world.” Many years later, when it was my turn to choose a new car and the only requirement was that if fit in the garage, I choose a 911. Brad was surprised, but not at all opposed. Now, some eight years later, that first Porsche, a gorgeous white, 997.2, has brought us many adventures, fantastic scenic drives, and many friends who share the love of Porsches. Recently, the path of fast cars got a little faster when we swapped out that 997 for a 991 2015 Targa 4S. How much faster, how many adventures, how many friends will this one bring? I can’t wait to find out! I’m pleased to be joining the Board as Secretary. My background in marketing, interior design, and insurance (all detail heavy industries) will aid me in maintaining accurate records for the Club. I hope to see you out at our many events enjoying the lines, the sounds and the beauty of all things Porsche.
Randy Homes, Treasurer
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Even though I test drove my first Porsche in 1986, the financial priorities of life kept creeping in and I did not finally buy my first one until 2015, a white 2011 911S Cabriolet. Then it took me a year to work up the courage to attend an Arrive and Drive, but I’ve been hooked on the club ever since. My wife Diane and I have done two beach getaways and are eagerly looking forward to our third Northwest Passage this June. We were the tourmeisters of last year’s Cabin Fever Tour to eastern Washington and will be leading it again this year. Although I’m a fourth generation Oregonian, I spent most of my career in southern California where I was a CPA and then the financial owner/partner of a couple of water purification related businesses. After that Diane and I came back to Portland where I enjoy working for one of the best engineering firms in the country. Although Diane has other plans for me, I could work forever. Long ago I ran trail ultramarathons but am limited now to just riding my bicycles. I am honored to be serving as ORPCA’s treasurer. While there are many ways to serve the Club, the role of treasurer matches well with my experience and “accountant-ish” proclivity to introversion.
Tom Floyd, Sales and Marketing Chair
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My Porsche Journey started when I was in the 3rd grade in my hometown of San Diego, California. Our class assignment was to write a short story of what we would like to do when we grew up. Well, I’ve loved cars all my life and at the young age of 8, I had a very comprehensive collection of Hot Wheels cars. For the report, I chose “Race Car Driver”. But not just any car, even then, I singled out Porsche as my weapon of choice. I even convinced my mother to take me to Alan Johnson Porsche to visit their Race Department and do a little “Research”. The staff at the dealership was very nice to me and the race techs talked about the cars and answered my questions. I was hooked on Porsche for life. In the Late 80’s I went to work as the Parts & Service Manager for a small independent shop called Dieters Porsche Service on 16th and Market in downtown San Diego. It wasn’t until 2014 that I was able to pull the trigger and purchase my first Porsche, an Arctic Silver 2002 996TT.I immediately signed up with PCA national and joined the Oregon Region Porsche Club. It’s been really fun to get to know so many members and try out a lot of the club activities such as the drives, autocross and the monthly socials. I’m very excited and honored to be chosen as the clubs Sales & Marketing Director and am looking forward to sharing some fresh ideas and continuing to be involved wherever I can.
Phyllis Thiemann, Director
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I have been a part of ORPCA since the early 1980’s and I have been doing event planning for more than 35 years.
When I was asked to serve on the Board, it was with the idea to make a social committee to help plan events and look for venues and new volunteers. The thing that makes the events so special are the volunteers and their commitment to serve in the club. The old saying “many hands make light work” is true. When we can share responsibilities among several people, it makes it more fun and not so burdensome for any one person.
I have attended both of the Porsche Parade Conventions which were held in Portland. We were part of the volunteer team for the second one. It takes a lot of volunteers to put on something of that magnitude. While we are not looking to do something of that size, we are coming up on our 60th anniversary commemoration this next year and would like to have some special recognition events as part of the festivities.
I am looking forward to more ideas and volunteers to implement in 2020 and beyond. Thank you for helping us, the Board, to serve you, our membership.
Larry Tracewell, Membership Director
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I have had a passion for cars, driving and motor sports since I was young and have owned many and various high performance sport cars and motorcycles in my lifetime. My wife Linda (a PCA member in her own right) and I were seemingly born “car people” so it was only natural I/we would one day own a Porsche. After joining the Porsche Club and attending a several Social events and Drives we were hooked on the activities and the people. We still look at each other all the time and say “We shoulda done this a long time ago!” As ORPCA Membership Director I hope Linda and I, along with the other Board Members and volunteers, can make your Porsche experience as great and rewarding as ours has been. Please look us up at our events if we haven’t met yet and don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any membership questions, and remember; “A Porsche odometer measures in smiles not just miles!”
Heinz Holzapfel, Director at Large & Webmaster
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In March 2017 I got lucky when I was able to fulfill a long childhood dream: my wife Sylvia and I bought our first Porsche, a 2011 911 C4S triple black Cabriolet. A year later we joined PCA and ORPCA. A few month ago we replaced Sylvia’s aging BMW 5-Series Sports Wagon with a 2018 Macan S.
We both have a history in High Tech, Sylvia as a Marketing Executive, myself as a Software Development Executive. We moved from Silicon Valley to Portland in 2009 after we fell in love with the city in 2006 during a road trip in our beloved 1999 Miata (2500 miles up and down the West Coast and 95% top-down).
After joining the club in March 2018, our first encounter with the club was the 2018 Cabin Fever Tour and we got hooked. We joined a number of Drive Events throughout the year, I also went to several Autocross events to get a better feeling of the car’s capabilities. In late 2018 Peg Ryan and I started brainstorming about improvements to the club’s aged website, and after board approval we started the work on the new website in January 2019, leading to the launch in June 2019. I focused on a low-overhead / low-maintenance architecture, the backend with new membership management and database management software, credit card processing capability, as well as front end, user interface and general design with focus on using the treasure trove of pictures generated by Harold Klein, our former club photographer. We now have the capability to collect membership dues via credit card as well as selling tickets for social events and drives. The NW Passage 2020 was the successful trial run for tickets sold through the website.
Another project I am working on, together with Eric Lewis, our Tour Meister, is to offer turn-by-turn navigation capability for our drives. After a benchmark betwen several apps, we settled on Scenic, an iPhone app originally developed for motorcycles. The trial run went through all of 2019 and the hard core test was done by 9 cars attending the 2019 NW Passage, none got lost! Go to the Tour Library to learn more about the app!
I am honored to be serving as ORPCA’s webmaster (what gives me a chance for a little hands-on coding again) and to support the club in other projects and assignments as Director at Large.
