Funnily enough, I was inspired to form the
Society when I heard a member of the Titanic Historic
Society describe how his society was formed after
precious documents relating to the sinking of the RMS Titanic
were destroyed when there was no group to which those
documents could be donated for preservation. There was also
the prospect of establishing a small group of Corregidor
History aficionados who might share in the esoteric knowledge
of our compulsion.
Not everyone who is interested in Corregidor is in the USA,
or able to visit the National Archives or Carlisle Barracks.
The Corregidor Historic Society publishes a number of Websites.
I soon enough learned that there's a lot of the "el
cheapo millenio" generation out there who think that
everything on the internet should be free, because they are
socially superior entities and thus deserving yo be served
with large helpings of free stuff paid for by someone esle who
must be forced to pay their fair share.
So as to support the costs of publishing the website to
good folk and freeloaders alike, I established a membership fee. The money
went towards my regular payments to the Internet Service
Provider and to my costs of keeping my computers going through
the years. It worked OK for a while, but there were two
problems - firstly, there weren't enough members joining
because we're in a really, and I mean
really esoteric
niche group. Besides, I had better things to do than turn
myself into a serial pest chasing annual fees from a bunch of
people who considered that an annual fee was a once only
payment for a lifetime membership.
I used to arrange an annual study trip to Corregidor for a
week or ten days. I put these together for several years. I
encouraged WWII Veterans come along to give us prespective. We
had a great time, they sure were the Greatest Generation.
We bought a lot of beer on Corregidor too, which was great,
because we listened and learned a lot.
In 2003, I issued a CD-ROM Membership
Disk. It contained a complete copy of the four Websites
as they then were. It included a
series of articles, resources and digital photographs that
were not available on "free to air" Internet. It cost me
several thousand dollars to put together. I never got my
investment back, largely thanks to (a) the very small
percentile of people who joined us in comparison with the
larger number who preferred to steal apples from our tree and
(b) the skinflint business practices of Magsaysay Lines
(Corregidor Hotel) who couldn't sell them fast enough, yet
couldn't pay me for them slow enough. In the end, I figured,
why the fuck should I deliver disks on consignment, and then
have to chase them for between six and nine months to get
paid? and (c) getting flooded out by Ondoy and
losing my stock of covers and commercially produced disks.
So I have only a few left, and I've decided to ration them.
They're now $50.
In 2007, I put a documentary, Tiga Isla (The Islanders)
together with a Filipino film director. It was a great
documentary, except for about 3 minutes of it. The director
put apersonal voice-over over on it which so completely pissed
off every American who saw it in the test screening that it
became totally unsellable in its form to any American.
We had a signed contract that obligated her to recut it for
General Exhibition and to shit-can her diatribe, but I soon
enough learned that signed contracts aren't worth shit for
beans in the Philippines. I suppose that's the risk you run
when you try to work with some ultra-Nationalist radical
feminist U.P. film maker.
For the last few years, I have been publishing a number of
books through Blurb.com, a book printing business. Ten
books so far. I didn't write them all, though I
ghostwrote some, and had co-authors on others. They are all
about Corregidor and the men of the 503d Parachute Regiment
who fought there, and I hoped they might appeal to our
limited market. The books are of tremendous quality, but
they're not cheap, because the printing costs are in excess of
90% of the selling price. I worked out that I could retire on
the royalty cheques provided I published another two hundred
titles during the next 150 years.
Besides, I lack the resources to promote the books.
That's the downside of printing companies who masquerade as
publishing houses.
So, to bring the price points down, I converted a number of
them to electronic publishing, which presently is limited to
the iPad. Now, the books are just brilliant for the iPad
technology, and only ten bucks a piece. So what do I
find? Two things:
(a) Most people don't have iPads;
(b) Those that do don't know squat about history.
In fact, a lot of the "el
cheapo millenio" generation are still out there thinking
that everything on the internet should be free, because they
deserve loads of free stuff paid for by someone else who
should be forced to pay their fair share. Luckily, the
men of the Greatest Generation didn't think that way.
There are a bunch of people I shall
thank, for all the friendship and extra assistance they have
given me through the years. Without each of them, the
website would be so much poorer, as would be my life too.
They are, in a deliberately mixed up order so that no
inferences can be drawn:
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Steve Foster, Al
McGrew, John Lindgren, Don Abbott, Tony Sierra, Bill
Calhoun, Chet Nycum, Harry Akune, Andy Amaty, Bill
Bailey, Bob Flynn, Mac Gallaspy, Gertus Jones, Arlis
Kline, Howard Lout, Tony Lopez, Bill Manz, Tom
McNeill, Charlie Rambo, John Reynolds, Paul Turley,
Arlis Kline, Selma Calmes, Gerard Weber, Cindy
Crawford, Tom Aring, Margee Linton, James Zobel, Peter
Parsons, Mapmaster, Karl Welteke, Art Napolitano, John
Moffitt, Charles and Elizabeth Bradford, David
Metherell, Verne White, Frank Zore, Charles Morford,
Dan MacRaild, Jim Mullaney, Dick Adams, James Pardue,
Tony Feredo, Chad Hill, John Eakin, Bob Hudson, and
Gary Quin. |
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If you are still of a mind to thank me for a decade
of work by sending a donation, then I do have a
bunch of the finest digital maps that ever were produced!
Mapmaster may well have been a bit of an anti-social prick
sometimes, but he sure was a brilliant digital cartographer
and a very kind and generous person who recognized that our
Society website did need something to raise funds from new
members, and to reward donors, and that the world's best
Corregidor Map would be it.
So that's what you get if you donate a minimum of $50
to us.
That, and a letter from me on behalf of all of the other
guys and gals who I have just thanked.
So what's keeping you?
Sincerely,
Paul Whitman.
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