(Induction Ceremony Presentation by Bob Dykstra)

The Land O’Lakes District Hall of Fame was established in 1988 to honor LOL barbershoppers who have made exceptional long-standing contributions to their home chapter and division, the Land O’Lakes District, and the Barbershop Harmony Society. To date, 33 individual barbershoppers and 5 quartets have been elected to Hall of Fame membership.

Today it’s my honor and privilege to add one more name to this impressive list of “Who’s Who” in barbershopping in the LOL district. Today’s inductee (I’ll call him Mr. X) has a very impressive resume’ of contributions at all levels of our hobby in singing, administration and judging during his forty years of barbershop experience.

Let’s start with Mr. X’s singing background. He’s a quartet man, but in addition, our honoree sang as a member of a competing chorus at thirty consecutive international chorus competitions. How’s that for an impressive stat? During this thirty-year consecutive competing streak, moreover, he was a member of three different chapter choruses.

In addition to his loyal participation as a chorus member, Mr. X has always been heavily involved in chapter administration. He served as chapter president five times in four different chapters. He contributed his expertise to chapter functioning in many other ways including stints as chapter treasurer and show chairman. He also found time to serve as chair of a 10,000 Lakes Division convention, an International Prelims convention, and the 1985 International Convention Camping program. Mr. X earned the distinction of being named Barbershopper of the Year in the Hilltop Chapter.

Mr. X also has a truly impressive record of accomplishments at the district and international level. He served six years as the LOL Contest and Judging Vice President. Four different times he chaired a committee charged with submitting a bid to hold an international convention in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. He served as Category Specialist for the old Contest Secretary judging category. While serving in that capacity he created the Contest Administrator position that is used throughout the barbershop society today. And our Mr. X is (and has been) a certified Contest Administrator for many years.

But there’s more….a whole lot more. In the early 1980s, Mr. X, along with another hall-of-famer, Dr. Jim Richards (you may have heard of him), designed and developed a computer program which greatly facilitated the scoring of all contests. After some early trials it was adopted by the Society in 1984 to be used in all competitions. Naturally, this transition from pencil and paper and adding machines to computers as a means of organizing scoring data met with some skepticism. Not everybody in the judging community completely trusted this new-fangled technology. As a result, our man, Mr. X., served on the international competition judging panel for the next ten years to keep an eye on the computer and his program to make sure they produced a valid result.

In the succeeding years he has worked diligently to keep the scoring program up-to-date. Because of changes in the computer world, it has been necessary for Mr X to re-design his scoring program numerous times. He finds it necessary to update and tweak the system constantly because of requests to enhance the program in various ways. For his significant contributions to the judging program, Mr. X has been awarded the C&J Award of Excellence and the Twenty-Year Judge Service Award. For his many contributions to the LOL District, he was named the 2001 Land O’Lakes District Barbershopper of the Year.

So let’s identify the man responsible for my taking so long to extol his myriad contributions to the world’s greatest hobby. I’m sure many of you already know who I am about to introduce. He is a member of the Hilltop and Minneapolis chapters. Please welcome our newest member of the Land O’Lakes District Hall of Fame………MR. ROGER MEYER..