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Community Corner

Col. Eileen Collins to Speak

Record crowd expected for 80th
Annual Meeting/Member Appreciation Day

Col. Eileen Collins, first female NASA shuttle commander, to speak

SPIRE Federal Credit Union’s Annual Meeting and Member Appreciation Day is set for February 22, 2014. The event, which has grown in recent years to attract nearly 2,000 attendees, is held at Grace Church in Eden Prairie. This year, SPIRE is hoping to attract 3,000 to the event, which features an inspirational keynote speaker, a $25 cash thank-you gift for all attendees, and really, really good cookies.

 “For the fourth year in a row, SPIRE is setting performance records,” said President and CEO Dan Stoltz. “We’re so proud to have seen record member growth and record checking account numbers again in 2013 … we’re hoping our member appreciation event will attract a record crowd as well.”

Col. Eileen Collins, the first female NASA shuttle commander, will be the event’s featured speaker. Col. Collins grew up in a working-class family in Elmira, New York. She often dreamed of becoming a pilot, voraciously reading every book she could find on the topic. When she got her first job at 16, she put her earnings toward flying lessons.

“I had saved up $1,000 and took that to my local airport, at age 19,” said Collins. “I asked them to teach me how to fly.”

Col. Collins worked and paid her own way through community college, eventually earning a scholarship to Syracuse University. She enrolled in the Air Force Undergraduate Pilot Training in 1978, the same year NASA began admitting women into the shuttle program. It was at this point her dream took a different shape: She wanted to become an astronaut.

In 1991, that dream became reality, and in the years since, Col. Collins has earned many medals, awards and honors. In 2005, she commanded the Discovery’s “Return to Flight” mission, the first manned flight since the Columbia tragedy. Now retired, she still serves on the Air Force Academy Athletic Corp. board of directors.

Both SPIRE members and non-members are invited to attend the event, which begins at 2 p.m. Registration is required; interested attendees should visit spire-banking.com for more information.


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