FLO's 2 BITS

In my past few columns, actually it was just a year ago in the Nov/Dec 2019 column,

I featured the people who were instrumental in making the then National Tattoo Club of the

World, into an incorporated nonprofit organization and the start of the NTA Conventions.

It was Dyane & Peter Poulos who called and offered to set up our first convention in 1979

in Denver, Colorado and had the Peter Tattoo Association which consisted of all those who

worked for Peter at that time, namely Larry Romano (Deceased), his brother Richie, Richie

Montgomery, Kim Schaefer, Barbara Chapman, Bill & Theresa Hannong, Greg & Peggy Skibo,

Cindy Burmeister/Stroeple, Ken Cameron, Mike Bruno (Deceased) , Fu, Cindy Chiarella, Mar-

guerite Freiberg, Erik Desmond, Eric Fischer, Charlie Esposito, Angelo Miller/Mylonas, Mike

(Deceased) & Jodi Paterno, Cheryl Forgione, Just Plain Bud Pierson, Jim Watson (Deceased),

Mike Armstrong (Deceased), Blue, Peter Giaquinto (Deceased), Florida Frankie Romano (no

relation, Frank Romano (Larry’s son), Flipper, Vicki Fuhrmann, Dave Saline, Samo, Glen Tack-

ett (Deceased, Keely Tackett/Smith (Deceased) and son’s Victor & Jason Tackett, & Tedd

Tiedemann (Deceased) do all the work with security and manning the doors at each event.

The following column featured all those who were our security directors of the 39 NTA

Conventions. Which were The Peter Tat 2 Crew as mentioned above. Then in 1984… We had

Don Eaker (Deceased) and Jerry Papa San Blankenship who volunteered to help this year only

(but helped in many different capacities after that ). Then from 1985-1988 Pete “PA” Ste-

phens with Squatch as his assistant took over Security. Then from 1989-1997 (except 1993 as

that was our Cruise conventio n) Duane “Bear” Roberts was our security Director. In 1993 on

our first NTA Cruise Bud Kowalek (Deceased) and Chet Staniorski were our Security Directors.

From 1998-2008 that’s 11 years Dave & Peggy Sucher took over the reins as Security Direc-

tors and then they passed the torch to Heide Unger and Tim Corley for the last 10 years (2009-

2018) as Security Directors… And while these next two people never actually held the title of

Security Directors I’d like to say THANKS also to Cristine (who was Heide & Tim’s assistant

the last 5 years) & Brandon Lewis as they were all lined up to jump in and help Heide & Tim

for the next conventions which unfortunately did not happen.

Then in my next column online I featured the people who were my right hand crew prior to, during and after each convention… Bill Mokry (Deceased) who only missed our first con-

vention in 1979 but who was there from 1981-2007), Jack Adams whose first NTA convention

was in McLean, VA in 1982 and who volunteered from 1983-2018. In 2003 Joeri D’Hondt at-

tended his first NTA Convention in St, Louis, MO and in 2004 I asked him to help me with a

couple of things to see if he would be a good recruit and so in 2005 Rich Ives told him that he should get more involved with the NTA and Joeri never looked back. He took over Bill Mokry’s position. There was Donna Grau, my daughter, well she was there from the beginning and she certainly made me look good by doing a lot of the NTA work at the home office as well as at the conventions. And as Don Makofske, my husband, who used to kid and say his job was to get Flo to the conventions on time helped with photography and videography at many of the conventions and a million and one other behind the scene jobs as well at all of the 39 NTA Con-

ventions.

And my last column the featured people were our Videographers. We had several do our

videography over the years – Warren Henderson did it for quite a few years, then Don Eakers

(Deceased) did it for us several times as well as did Don Makofske. And then Gene Houghton

(Deceased) took over doing all the videoing in 1996 – 2009 he loved doing it so much that he

not only taped the contests but he started on Thursday night taping at the Welcome party and

had the contestants for the next day start to show their artwork for all to see. He taped the

Awards Ceremony and then the Roasts on Sunday evenings. He did this for us until his health

started to fail him and that is when Don Makofske took over for the last few years. Gene’s last

convention was 2009.

Also featured in this column were our NTA Photographers: Johnny Opland joined the NTA in 1987 and his first NTA convention was in Orlando, Florida where he started taking photos and giving them to me for the newsletters. In 1993, I asked him if he would be one of ourphotographers and he said YES! Richard Todd first came on the scene at the 1987 NTA San Diego Convention and he gave me copies of the photos for our NTA newsletters as well. And Billy Tinney came to the NTA Conventions since 1982. In 2000 Richard could not attend the convention and so I called Billy and asked if he would be our “Official” photographer for that one and from then on as well along with Richard and Johnny O and so that is how Billy came on board.

And now I’d like to THANK all of our Hosts and Hostesses from the NTA Conventions. Their job is to be a liaison between the hotel and me since I cannot be on the scene and so they have to check out the hotel for me to make sure it will work. Enough sleeping rooms, restaurants,

and the sizes of the meeting rooms. Then they have to get in touch with their local board

of health and get me all the rules and regulations. They get the hazard waste people to come and pick up the sharps containers after the convention is over. They have to be willing to spread the word about the convention and be our PR representative as well. They hook me up with the

portable sink company. And have to be able to have a place to store all the boxes I send out with convention stuff in them – like all the registration packets, the awards, etc., etc. as it is at least 100 large size boxes and then they have to get them to the hotel for us on the Wednesday morning of the convention. They also used to have to find a charity that we gave money to from the 50/50 we held for charity – that is until we changed over to the Col. Todd Hardship Fund as we said charity begins at home – and so in 1995 the hosts no longer had to find us a charity – but some set up different events for us as well - but I’ll talk about that more as I list our hosts and hostesses….

And… so our first Hostess was Dyane Poulos who did a fantastic job in 1979 in Denver, Colorado. That was the easiest convention for me – all I had to do was show up because she did all the talking.

Our Second convention was also pretty much all done for us too as it was Guy Martynuik

that had set one up for himself but then found out that his wife, Carolyn was pregnant and so he asked if the NTA would like to take it over and I said as long as he’d stay on as our Host, that

would be great. So Guy and Carolyn were our host and hostess for our 1981 NTA Reno Convention. This one ran so smoothly, too, as Guy really had it all taken care of. He even had the diagram for the booths made up for me and had all the I’s dotted and all the t’s crossed. But I did have to do the announcing this time.

Convention # 3 in 1982 was in McLean, VA and Grandpa Groovy was our host that year. This was the year that we almost had our first catastrophe hahaha. It seemed when they gave us the diagram of their hotel and Groovy sent it to me it was somehow done backwards and so the room set up from one event going into another would be impossible to turn around to be ready on time for us. The hotel management was so upset with the poor girl who set everything up

for us because the week prior to us they had the Shriners in there for a convention and they supposedly wrecked the place and then when the Manager of the hotel saw the words Tattoo Convention he blew his top at her saying we would probably cost her her job for booking us. Well when we got there and we found out that the floor plans where impossible for the hotel to turn around for our event in the evening I told her not to worry that we would turn it around for them. She said we would not be allowed to do that as we were not insured for moving furniture around. I told her not to worry because it was an easy turnaround for sure. What we had to do is actually have the chairs face in the other direction so simple fix - I told everyone when our meeting was over to stand up and take the chair in front of them lift it up and turn to the right and do an about face and put the chair back down - then all the hotel staff had to do was do the perimeter differently so we had the room pretty well set up for her in less than 10 minutes and

they had ample time to do the rest in time for our next event. And the manger told her to see if she could book us again as we were the best group, he ever saw.. Sorry I got off the subject but just mentioning this convention brought back that memory and had to share it.

I guess I had better just say the convention and the year and the hosts/hostesses or I won't have enough room for this column hahaha. (As you can see, if we returned to a city, there were a lot of repeat Hosts and Hostesses.)

I can’t THANK these members enough for all their help, as without them volunteering to be our liaison with the hotels and getting me the info, we needed to set things up it wouldn’t have worked. There is no way I could have gone back and forth to all these sites to set things up. We needed to have someone right there to check things out for us.

And then we had volunteers to oversee various events such as: Bill Hannong our yearly Golf Tournaments and Tom Meyer our Bowling Tournaments. There were motorcycle runs by several members: Matt Thrash and Tom Keller. Jacci Gresham got me in touch with the Paddleboat company down in New Orleans and we had a great time cruising down the river with dinner and music event. We even had a Poker night set up by Mike Trobaugh for the Rapid City convention and those who played in it thought it was a lot of fun. Pete Stephens got us a magician and dancers for San Diego. Carrie got us dancers (actually she was one of the dancers, too) for Garden Grove. Anna got us Hawaiian dancers for Philly. Apache Jil got us bands for the tattoo room on Saturday and Sunday. And then we had our own NTA band we dubbed the “NATPACK” of Rob Massimiano and his son Dave; Tim Corley and his son Strider; Joe Hegarty also sat in on some of the events with his guitar as well and he would play when the NTA band took breaks or played at a different event at the conventions. Then they added our NTA singers as well like Pat Sinatra, Jeanine Johnson, Anna Paige, Carole Netherton and Telisa Swan. Joe LaGreca would dance the night away with the lucky ladies that he danced with or should I say Joe was lucky to get to dance with all the ladies whenever the NAT PACK was playing. Then Carole Netherton started the Crazy Hat contests for us, and Deana Lippens made 9 crazy hats one year specifically for certain people to enter the contest with. I am sure there is more I am forgetting right now, and I am very late with this column too. With that in mind I will stop right here but I will try to look through all my copies of the conventions and add the other great events thought up by others so that I can give you recognition as well. But right now, I want to say THANK YOU to all our Hosts & Hostesses and Grand Marshall’s and everyone who came up with our entertainment or special events at each one of our 39 NTA Conventions… And like I always say at the end of my rendition of what happened at each convention and who volunteered etc. I’d like to also say a THANK YOU to each and every one of you who attended those 39 conventions – if you hadn’t come there would be no convention and we all wouldn’t have been a part of the NTA FAMILY – What a shame that would have been. I have met so many of you over the years and am so grateful for that – my only regret is that I didn’t get to meet every one of our members who never did get to come to any or our conventions. So,to those of you whom I have met – I MISS YOU! And to those of you whom I never got to meet– it’s a shame that – I MISSED OUT on getting to meet the rest of this NTA FAMILY! 

And since this is December – my favorite time of the year – I’d like to continue my tradition of wishing all of you:

A Very Safe, Healthy and Happy Hanukkah

A Very Safe, Healthy and Happy Kwanzaa

A Very Safe, Healthy and Merry Christmas or

A Very Safe, Healthy and Happy Whatever Holiday you do or do not celebrate!

And HOPEFULLY May we all be able to spend it with our Loved ones. And…. As always – I just love this tradition…

My wish for you for 2021 is:

Whatever you wish for me and mine, I wish double for you and yours!

And for the first time ever…I believe we can all agree that come this New Year’s Eve, we will all say GOOD RIDDANCE TO 2020!!! Well that is for most of 2020, Good Riddance but The best news for us in 2020 is that we have a brand new Great Granddaughter As we welcomed our grandson, Dean & his wife Alessia’s baby girl, Aurora DeChiaro into our family on December 3, 2020 at 4:26pm. [7 lbs. 15 oz., 19"] [Baby's photo in our New Arrivals Section]