We had basically concluded that Alamo Plaza would be impossible to get as a venue site; perhaps Fox would be able to gain permission to broadcast from there, but our Tea Party would probably be best held nearby, perhaps at Alamo Stadium. We were checking out other urban venues as well, but when Robin announced this and explained some of the difficulties in securing the Plaza, an attendee at the open meeting leaped up and challenged him; Hadn’t we even tried? Who had we talked to, in securing permits – didn’t we even KNOW anyone? This was Matthew P., who insisted forcefully that it was quite possible, and that he could do it. Matthew looks a bit like General Grant on one of his dyspeptic days. But he has all of Grant’s iron stubborness; he was all for the Tea Party, and all for having it on Alamo Plaza, and he knew just the people to talk too. So we kept his name and telephone number, and Robin told him to go for it, and to coordinate with another key volunteer, Eric G., the lawyer better known among us as The Other Eric. In the mean time, Eric A., the video producer had another stroke of genius – as many of the volunteers on the committee would meet him on Alamo Plaza Monday morning, and he would do a quick guerrilla shoot of us inviting Glenn Beck to come to our Tea Party – it turned out that this was not needed at all, as it appeared that Glenn Beck committed himself that morning to coming to San Antonio.

And by Friday, April 3rd, we got the word from Matthew P. and Eric G. that the miracle was done; we had secured the Plaza – with about a week and a half to go until the Tea Party. Matthew P. would coordinate between the City of San Antonio and the Fox people, Eric G. would handle all the considerable legal stuff … and Dee M. and Jerry H. would manage fund-raising. Keep it in mind that most of us only met face to face for the first time around the last of March and the beginning of February.

We had barely enough time to take in this news – ten days to sort out all the logistics, which were enormous, and to raise the funds to pay for the necessities. I think it was that Friday morning that I spent about an hour on the phone with a woman who had organized many such events downtown. She couldn’t be involved to any extent in the Tea Party, because of her own full-time job, but she expounded forcefully on several aspects that we had never considered until that moment: barricades, and security, crowd control, securing places to park jumbotrons, which would mean another permit, of security badges for our personnel, of me as the media representative being constantly available to the minions of the press. I took notes, lots of notes, and went to Robin over the weekend with them; we needed someone dedicated to event-planning, someone who had done massive events. I had only done one, years before, and in the military at that, and with six months to pull it off. I’d be out of my depth on that and knew it.

But among us, we already had a volunteer, Diane E. who had set up a sign-painting party that very weekend – she’s a local realtor and by good fortune, had done some big golfing events… which involved the media, set-up, security, crowds – the whole ball o’wax. So Diane was in play as the overall event organizer, working with Matthew. We had a couple of epic telephone conference calls during that week, which clocked in at well over two hours, and another set of meetings on Palm Sunday, which also went on for hours; who to have as master of ceremonies, who to have as speakers besides Glenn Beck… absolutely no politicians, we had agreed from the start. Not even as VIPs attending, although they were welcome to come and attend, and listen like everyone else.

The financial crunch was alleviated somewhat, by Glenn Beck offering to host a fund-raising luncheon for us at the Menger Hotel on the day of the Tea Party. He had already withdrawn as keynote speaker for our event – which, upon consideration was probably a good thing. This was supposed to be about us, not about celebrities. He would open the event, and then give over to our program of local speakers – and this was when Ted Nugent got into the picture; coming to perform the National Anthem. Just how cool was that going to be? In that case we could handle another celebrity, but the line on politicians was set in cement, no matter how much they asked. By this time, we had all begin to sense that we were riding a wave – best not to look down, just keep going forward.

At the Palm Sunday meeting, we gained another key volunteer – to oversee security. Early on, we had a pair of volunteers who worked in law enforcement, but the way that this event was growing, we knew very well that we would need someone with command experience, and more than that – command experience at large events … and out of the blue, another volunteer, Dennis O., who was an acquaintance of Robin’s. Dennis spent some time talking to me after the meeting, Robin being tied up talking to other people. After my educational lecture from the experienced organizer-of-events, someone like Dennis seemed to have the right skill set; retired LAPD at a fairly high level. He was brought in, just in the nick of time, for a final executive meeting on Easter Saturday.

I would guess that at least part of the reason that we came together so quickly is that San Antonio is a small town cunningly disguised as a large city, and so all of us brought our ready-made acquaintance-network into the mix – and in some cases a pretty fair idea of their skill-set. It turned out that a lot of our networks overlapped and intertangled. Robin knew me through blogging, and knew Dennis through his church; Matthew turned out to also know the lady who gave me the quick course in event-planning, who also is acquainted with Diane… and as it turned out I had written about Matthew’s g-g-g-grandfather in Book Two of Adelsverein; the Fredericksburg school-master Louis Scheutze, who was murdered by the Hanging Band during the Civil War. Topping that off, the publisher of a local construction newsletter who came to help in the newsroom may be a distant cousin of Matthew’s. I am fairly sure if I asked other members of the planning committee about their own networks, it would turn out that we were pretty thickly connected already, through friends and friends of friends and various civic organizations.

(Next – riding the wave at the San Antonio Tea Party, and why Ted Nugent is so darned popular.)