By York W. Porter, I.S. President

The Immortalist Society, with the kind cooperation of the Cryonics Institute in loaning us its meeting area, held its annual meeting on Sunday, Sept. 25^th, 2006. Most of the time, in the past few years at least, these meetings have been fairly straight forward with the reports from officers, the conducting of relatively limited business, the election of officers and then an adjournment. This year proved to be somewhat different with two major issues coming before the Society. The first was whether or not the Immortalist Society would continue under the name it has held for many years or whether a new name would be in order. The second issue was similar in that a decision was going to be made whether The Immortalist would continue being called by its long standing name or whether it, too, would wind up with a different title to go by.

The meeting was called to order by the I.S. President, yours truly, followed by some brief remarks thanking the present slate of officers for the work that they do which is so essential in keeping the Society going. Members don't see the "behind the scenes" work that these individuals do in helping to keep the Immortalist Society running but, trust me, their efforts are critical. From John Bull's efforts in his Vice-Presidential position and his work as Editor of our publication to John Besancon's efforts in keeping our finances in order as our Treasurer and Royse Brown's work as our Society's Secretary in making accurate notes and records of our meetings for future leadership to rely on, they truly represent the heart and soul of our organization and it wouldn't be possible for the Immortalist Society to carry on without persons of their dedication and integrity to do what I know must seem at times to them to be thankless tasks which they carry on. From myself, as well as the rest of the members, a hearty and sincere "well done" is due to these folks for their efforts to further the cause of the wonderful concept of cryonics.

Next came a brief and wholly inadequate "Thank you" and that was directed to the founder of all of our efforts and that person was and is, of course, Robert Ettinger. Professor Ettinger has toiled with Herculean like efforts in insuring that the concept he originated became and remains a reality. I have been going to the Detroit area for about 20 years now and there are no words adequate to express the debt that each cryonicist, past , present, and future, owes this very fine individual and I have been honored to follow in his footsteps and to call him my friend.

The next item on the agenda involved the reports from the various officers. No corrections were made and, on an inquiry from the chair, both our Treasurer, John Besancon, and our Vice-President, John Bull, agreed that there should be no problem in continuing to print our organization's journal in its present "hard copy" form for at least another year. As some readers may remember, there has been discussion from time to time about whether it might be necessary to go to an entirely "on-line" format. As one who loves computers and the Internet but prefers, at times, the convenience of a traditional magazine, I was very pleased to hear that the "take it anywhere" format would continue for the foreseeable future.

The election of officers was a short and straightforward matter. All the present officers were reelected for the usual one year term which runs from January of one year to the end of December of the same year.

The next item of business was whether our publication should retain its name. Some discussion was heard on this with Rudy Matic, a member from the state of New York who has a strong background in marketing, indicating that in a poll he conducted some time back that the word "Immortalist" was a negative in its use. After some discussion and some "advisory" votes from all the persons present, a suggestion from the floor and a general consensus was that, if there were no trademark issues, The Immortalist would now go by the title "Longevity" which was the title of an Omni publication from some years back that was, to our knowledge, no longer in publication. The second title suggested was Long Life, with the general agreement being that if the two names mentioned so far were not able to be adopted, we would continue onward for one more year with The Immortalist as our publication's title. Subsequent efforts after the meeting by the I.S. officers in dealing with this issue resulted in longlLife:LongevityThrough Technology winding up as the final choice of names.

The final major item of business was the conducting of the election of the possible name change of the Society itself. There was a fair amount of discussion on both sides of the issue. Some, like myself, had had instances occur in their life in which they believe that the word "Immortalist" presented an impediment to getting the message across to others. Others felt that the name had been held for several years without any problem, that the name tied in with Robert Ettinger's book title 'The Prospect of Immortality' and that things should be left as they are. After the discussion ended, voting members were asked to mark their ballots and the meeting was adjourned. Ballots, including mail-in ballots, were then counted in plain view by John Besancon, Royse Brown, and York Porter and although there was some disparity on the first round of ballot counting in the "instant runoff ballot" format that was used, eventually it became obvious that the present title of 'Immortalist Society' could not be defeated mathematically since it finally received 10 votes out of the 19 ballots received.

So, in summation, the results of the meeting were that the same officers were elected, the organization's name didn't change, but the publication name did change. In any event, I.S. remains steadfast in its mission to try to continue to spread the word about the concept of cryonics., to help in the quest for research in cryonics, and to continue the proud heritage it has as one of the oldest cryonics societies in existence.