This morning, I was contacted by Cindy Martin the wife of Joe Martin aka "Ohio Joe".
It seems the TMA has lost a very near, and dear friend.
Ohio Joe passed away last night from a massive heart attack!
At this time, I have no further information, it was truly a bad day for talking and asking about all the details.
You can expect a follow-up, along with more details in a day or so, even sooner if I get that call.
For the newcomers to this forum, I offer the following:
*** You "old Timers" jump in here and help me out. When you're in your 80's one's memory is often not as good as it should be.
Ohio Joe was a Charter Member, and a driving force in forming the Traditional Muzzleloading Association.
Back in 2002, Rondo, Ohio Joe, Captchee, SSE, and myself were "chatting" back and forth, on many different forums, on the sport of Muzzleloading, How do we keep it alive and well, and about how we, meaning the whole Country, needed an Association dedicated solely to "Traditional Muzzleloading" in its rawest form.....because many of us still preferred the old-fashioned way when it came to Muzzleloading.
The NMLRA had just bowed-out to the many Manufacturers, Advertisers, Gun Writers, Merchandizers, and even many State Game Departments, in order to serve the In-Line Crowd...Such a move by the NMLRA was inevitable, the writing had been on the wall for several years, as this crowd meant money in the coffers for many people, and in particular, the ones I mentioned above, especially the State Game Departments.
Our Start-up was slow, very slow, because back in that day there were a dozen or more, 'new' forums popping up on the Internet that readily accepted the In-Line as an advancement in black powder shooting. Many of those forums over the past 20 or so years have since gone under, and are never to be seen again.
The start of the TMA actually came about in the Fall of 2004, when Claude, who was then the sole owner of the widely popular Traditional Muzzleloading Forum, gave me/us a "private forum", on his Forum....just as "we" have sub-forums here in the TMA
, only this one was locked to the public.
At the time I was a moderator on his forum for a short time, and for anyone to enter that "private forum" they had to contact me first.
It was there on that forum that we were formed.
With that being said, once we were Chartered, and started selling Memberships, Claude became Charter Member #1....
(I think I should also mention that the four members mentioned above were also very low member numbers, somewhere between 150 to 200 ?...I was #161 and Believe Rondo was #160, or 1 less than myself as he got me to join him on that very same forum, and "we" even helped Claude promote the forum across the internet, helping him build his business, in other words)
We formed this Association on "Claude's Forum", In fact, a new President, later on, Dave Poss became the 1st active President, and a Board of Directors, was all established from the 200+ participants, all in that little one-room corner of The Muzzleloading Forum....I suspect excitement was building for a Traditional-only Organization, as Claude was bending heavily toward the new In-Lines too.
SSE, (Jim Vitelic) "volunteered' to be our Attorney, and guided us through the many processes we encountered in becoming a Chartered Organization.
But we made it through the process, and Jim even filed it for us in the State of Michigan, in Jan. or Feb. of 2005.
We made it through all the muss and fuss of becoming "legal" and fairly soon we had almost 600 registered 'participants', and well over 100 Chartered Members.
It's only right that I mention that we had several Charter Members who were also tech's, and as such we also had our very own Web-Forum up and running in late January of 2005.
One of the most memorable, to me, of those "Tech's" was an old Buckskinner by the name of "Smoked"... He too has gone on to that Great Rendezvous in the sky.
Ohio Joe was very instrumental in all this, having served on the Board of Directors, as well as our National Match Director for many years
At one time during our growing period, we even discussed, pretty deeply too, the possibility of other small Black Powder Shooting Clubs coming into the fold under TMA Chartered Clubs, as long as 40% of their Membership was with the TMA, we thought about Chartering that Club...but then the Insurance thing came into play, and we were quickly advised to drop that thought until we could insure everyone was covered. Ohio Joe was very active in all this, contacting other Clubs, making different Range Trips, and asking many hard questions...it turns out, that not a single Club had given this Insurance any thought at all....it died on the vine!
My own most difficult task proved to be that of establishing a Bank Account, as a Chartered Association, with no Cash in the Bank, no credit, and no references....
Remember, these were the days of Enron, MCI, and many Savings & Loans, along with Banks going Bankrupt, leaving the investors with nothing...so, the Federal Government stepped in and set some pretty hard rules.
However, with the help of my wife, Janet Baker, aka "Mama Bear" stepped up, and we have had an account in Shelton, Washington since then.
And then, the TMA getting a License to operate in the State in Washington, Taxes, etc, etc, ...Many of our early members, even Charter Members were from Washington State as we had a very active recruitment program, with State Representatives from different States, all of them right from our own Members.... as did Riley, Swamp, Ron LaClare, and several others.
We printed and passed out Hundreds, if not thousands, of Flyers at every event we attended..... Ohio Joe was doing the very same thing.
Those of you who never got to meet Joe, or talk to him, may not know what all this is all about. Just trust me when I say, any Member who did as much for any organization as Joe did for this one, will be sorely missed.
R.I.P. Ohio Joe
Topic: A very sad day for the TMA... (Read 840 times)