CAMPAIGN PAGE FOR NATIONAL COORDINATOR 2019-2020 Hi everyone! Well, here we go again. My name is Denise Wells, and
I would love to serve as your National Coordinator for another year. I feel that there are still many things with which I
can assist this great Project for another term. Please bear with me and I hope you will read to the end. I think It is important to know who I am. So first, a little about
me. I'm going to be 68 in a few months, but other than my bum knee, I still feel pretty darn good. This past year has brought some good and bad changes for me. My daughter has given me a new granddaughter who is an absolute delight and I was there when she was born. How wonderfully extraordinary and exciting is that? I feel very humbled and privileged that she wanted me with her and her husband when the little bundle of joy arrived. And it's pretty fun watching her grow and change each week.... LOL I'm now designated the lead babysitter! My daughter and granddaughter have given me a lot to look forward to. December brought me horrible news with the passing of my son though. It has not been an easy journey since he passed. He was my only child for 19 1/2 years before my daughter came along. He thought that I would love her more than him. I was worried about how all that works, and it was such a joy when she was born, to realize there isn't this much love for this child, and this much love for that one. It just gets bigger and bigger. Often we did not see eye-to-eye on many things, but that is expected. We don't all have the same interests, the same caring for certain things, the same taste in foods or other things in one's life. But hopefully there is always love. I miss him dearly but am trying to take solace in the fact that he is now with my mother, who also adored him, and he adored her. We have seen quite a bit of change in The USGenWeb Project. We have had new volunteers join us, volunteers step up in areas of the project to take on new responsibilities. We've lost and we have gained. But through it all I am happy to see that members are still taking on this Project so it will not disappear. I believe we are now in our 23rd year! That's pretty darn amazing considering how things come and go in genealogy and in the world. I want to see this Project that many have been with since the beginning stay around for another 20+ years. Wouldn't that be exciting? I invite anyone who has new ideas and projects and interests to continue to send me your thoughts. This is YOUR project and I'm just a part of it. It takes ![]() My opponent in this election states: "While Denise has done very well in chairing the Advisory Board and worked on many rules and regulations, I differ from her in that I feel the biggest problem we have is volunteers. Without them we won't be able to go on." Contrary to Jana's comment, she is wrong. The entire basis of this Project is our County and Local Coordinators who maintain sites throughout this project. Without them, there would be no USGenWeb! I have fought my entire tenure to protect and help our Coordinators, wherever they are serving. Much of my work is behind the scenes and not always viewed by everyone. Everything I do is in support of our Coordinators. I do invite Jana to assist me in bringing new volunteers to the Project. In the beginning of my service as the National Coordinator, a dedicated county coordinator in Minnesota contacted me about his state, telling me that they had no leadership for a very long time. I investigated and I had to take over the state, determine what had happened (both the SC and the ASC had disappeared at least a year before), assisted with managing the entire state, obtaining new coordinators, removing those who had disappeared from their counties, and enabled an election. That state is doing very well now. I also had to step in on South Carolina to assist them. It was not easy as this state had an SC, however, I learned she had been injured in an accident and was unable to deal with any of the issues in the state. South Carolina is still recovering, but it is building still as time passes. Then Utah had serious issues. It is still recovering but their SC had passed away and "anointed" his ASC, so she told me. Unfortunately, the SC cannot just turn over a state to his or her ASC without an election. I told her that I would assist and support her in an election because I had no issue with her becoming the SC but it required an election. When I advised her that she should update her own county pages so that the membership would have no problems supporting her, she got mad and resigned! Unfortunately, I learned that a few months later she had passed away. Very sad. After that Nevada became an issue unfortunately, and after discussions with the SC, I took over Nevada. We are still seeking new volunteers to replace those who fail to respond to any communication. [HINT: We could still use some new volunteers there!] Also, I am assisting with the rebuilding of Florida [we need volunteers here also]. I was a coordinator in FLGenWeb for quite some time, but finally stepped away. The SC there for quite a while, who I was close to, became quite ill and just recently passed away. She then stepped down, and one of her ASCs was elected as SC. Both had worked tirelessly for Florida for many years. Her husband was seriously injured in a motorcycle accident and she came to me for assistance for the state when her ASC failed to respond to any attempts to contact her. She then named me as an ASC, and this spring she also resigned as the SC. Last fall, she moved the state to my server that I set up, so it could be managed without any additional problems. The former SC's daughter removed all control from the current SC and so far has failed to provide me with any assistance Such a shame because Patrice worked years for FLGenWeb. When Rootsweb went down in December 2017, and we thought it was going to be back up and running shortly, we soon found out that they were not going to get our sites back up and online, at least for a while, and it was months before they did. We had hundreds of sites housed on their servers, which are now, as most know, owned by Ancestry. In January 2018, in an attempt to support our county coordinators I then paid for and obtained server space for any county coordinator who needed space because they could not afford to host their sites anywhere they would have to pay. USGenWebSites.org currently hosts the following: 3 Special Projects 6 State Sites 344 County Sites 6 City/Town Sites 354 sites hosted This has all been done in support of the entire USGenWeb Project, but with 344 county sites, I'd say I'm a huge supporter of our county coordinators. Now, I'm also excited to see this past year that new faces are joining the Advisory Board. They bring new thoughts and opinions and desires. They help the National Coordinator to make changes when they are needed. We continue to strive to Make USGenWeb Greater Again! (Sorry, I had to say that! Hopefully, I haven't offended too many people.) My real estate contract business has been growing again, and I have added a female commercial realtor to my cadre of real estate clients. She works predominantly with South American buyers as she speaks Portuguese and Spanish, as well as English. This is exciting for me as commercial real estate is much different than residential real estate; and, it goes to show that the real estate business keeps evolving and South Florida real estate is popping. I am learning more every day in everything I do and I guess you can teach an old dog new tricks. I have worked in the past with an investor/developer and that is benefiting me in the commercial area as I understand much of what business and finance analytics are involved with the purchase of commercial properties, strip center, shopping malls, etc. I still work a couple days a week with a law firm in my community, and they are very supportive in all of my endeavors; however, that may not continue much longer given the growth of my work in real estate. But genealogy gives me my grounding. In family, in history, in leaving a legacy for my family and others. It's my home away from business. Born and raised in Indianapolis, Indiana for much of my life, I married a Navy boy during the Viet Nam War. We lived in Alameda and San Francisco, CA, before returning to Indianapolis while my
husband was overseas. I finally moved to Florida in 2001, arriving
here on my 50th birthday, shortly before the 9/11 attack on the
United States. Reinventing myself in Florida, I did legal contract work for numerous law firms, as well as handling music publishing and business matters for Dion of "Dion & The Belmonts" fame from 2001-2012. I managed the copyrighting of his music, writings and albums through the US Patent & Trademark Office, which moved to electronic filing of his music/albums; assisted with writing and revising contracts; handled his music catalog for his publishing company; calculated writers' pay for numerous other musicians with whom he collaborated on various compositions; dealt with licensing for the various music reality shows, including American Idol, for use of his songs, managing licensing, performances; and everything in between during that time period. We even discussed the arrangement of songs on his albums and the compilations on those albums. I was even fortunate enough to be listed on the liner notes thank you on several of his albums since 2001. It was a fun and exciting experience I will always treasure. Attending two national NGS Conferences, I was very proud to represent the Project as your
National Coordinator during the 2016 Fort Lauderdale, FL conference (our
20th anniversary year), as well as at the 2017 Conference in
Raleigh, NC. I hope to be able to attend more in the future. Both conferences were a
great experience to meet many of our volunteers, as well as researchers, authors and speakers who often use our state, county and project sites. Meeting numerous heads
of other genealogy programs, companies, educators was a great experience; i.e., FamilySearch, Billion Graves, MyHeritage, National Institute for Genealogical Studies, and others. FOR THE PROJECT I want to investigate more ways for The USGenWeb Project to bring in new volunteers. We have many counties that are in desperate need for help and material and I would like to see those counties become adopted by new and excited volunteers. WEBINARS & NEW VOLUNTEERS One way to instigate opportunities to potentially bring in new volunteers is with an outreach program to set
up and do some live webinars around the country and work with libraries
and other professional genealogists and authors from around the United States to interact with researchers from around the
country. I would love to hear from anyone privately if you are
interested in putting something like that together. I think it would go
a long way to support the entire Project and to potentially recruit new
volunteers and more interest in The USGenWeb Project. FOR YOU! I may not have met most of
you, but I've been working for ALL OF YOU since I was originally elected to
this position as National Coordinator for The USGenWeb Project. Many of you have worked with me through some
interesting and trying times. Most
recently the USGW has been dealing with Ancestry/Rootsweb taking all of our
hosted sites offline since mid December 2017.
This has not been the easiest of times for the entire project; but great
All that being said, there is still more that I can do for this wonderful genealogy project, and I hope you will give me a chance to continue throughout 2019 and 2020 to help make this project grow and deal with the changing events. Thank you for allowing me to
serve you. Feel free to send me any questions you might have at: ncusgenweb@gmail.com |
husband when the little bundle of joy arrived. And it's pretty fun watching her grow and change each week.... LOL I'm now designated the lead babysitter! My daughter and granddaughter have given me a lot to look forward to. 

