For all of the members who found their way to San José , we send our heartfelt gratitude. And if there were not more pressing matters, we would write each and every one a personal thank you note. In particular, we speak for the executive board in acknowledging the hard work, enthusiasm, and corazón of the OAH staff. Meetings Director Amy Stark deserves special mention for relocating the conference in a matter of weeks, a Herculean effort, indeed. Some of the highlights of the conference included the Vietnam plenary featuring Frances Fitzgerald, Duong Van Mai Elliott, David Maraniss, and Daniel Ellsberg and organized by Fredrik Logevall; the offsite sessions at the brand new Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Library, History San José, the Mexican Heritage Plaza, and the Peralta Adobe Historic Site in San José and the Chinese Historical Society of America and the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco; and, of course, James Horton’s profoundly stirring presidential address, which concluded with his beautiful variation on Frank Sinatra’s rendition of “The House I Live In.”

Given that the OAH is one of our academic homes, some straight talk about San José seems in order. We would like to dispel specific rumors that we heard during and after the course of the convention.

1. Registration was dismally low.  Our numbers were, in fact, quite good under the circumstances--1,888 people registered for San José, more than the 1,875 who registered for St. Louis in 2000, the previous time we had to move a meeting, and the 1,850 who signed up for Los Angeles in 2001--our last West Coast meeting.
2. The OAH should have learned a lesson from Adam’s Mark.   Actually, we learned a great deal from our experience in 2000 and this knowledge enabled the staff to the move the conference in a matter of weeks. The labor situation was unanticipated and probably will continue to influence conference venues in the future. To avert future disruptions, the OAH has taken the lead with other professional societies to develop boiler plate language in all future contracts, language that will limit the liability of professional organizations in the case of a labor dispute.  In fact, because of our experiences in 2000 and 2005, other professional organizations and learned societies are looking to OAH as a model for handling such crises.  A number of them have faced or are facing the same situation OAH encountered in San Francisco as the labor boycott continues there.
3. Relocating to San José spoiled the annual meeting.  Feedback from attendees was strongly positive, both about the quality of the program and the efforts made to ensure it was a productive conference.  Other organizations that chose to proceed with meetings in San Francisco this year experienced more serious problems than did OAH.
4. The OAH had other options besides relocating the conference.  Crossing a picket line or canceling the conference all together were the only two choices in the realm of possibility, both of which would have placed the organization at greater financial risk.  Both would have created more internal disruption in our organization.
5. OAH moved attendees from one hotel to another without permission.  The OAH office would never consent to this.  One of the conference  hotels overbooked itself, due in part to the presence of another major convention in town, and--like an overbooked airline--began to bump OAH registrants to a different conference hotel.
6. The financial penalties for moving to San José are overwhelming.  It is very likely that the OAH will be able to negotiate a lower penalty from the San Francisco hotel. A San José Fund has been inaugurated to help cover these expenses and in the short term, the office will exercise considerable financial restraint.

When we entered the profession over twenty years ago, the OAH was known primarily for the annual meeting and the Journal of American History and while both remain central to  the OAH mission, the organization has created a network of partnerships among precollegiate educators, public historians, and community college instructors. As an OAH  participant in the Teaching American History initiatives and National Park Service initiatives, I (Ruiz) can attest to the impact our members have in fostering a greater appreciation, excitement, and understanding of American history. In the words of James Horton, “Tell them about people, about lives. Take them to the places where it happened. That’s how you get people excited about history. Make it accurate, and make it real.”

The OAH Leadership Advisory Council, cochaired by Jay Goodgold and Ira Berlin, is exploring fundraising possibilities to nurture these very public functions of the organization. You will also soon receive a spring campaign letter asking for your help. The Gilder Lehrman Institute has also provided invaluable support in promoting history education at the precollegiate level. And the fact that our membership figures for precollegiate teachers have more than doubled in the last five years suggests the impact the organization and its Magazine of History is  having on the way history is taught in a number of middle and secondary schools. OAH, through its distinguished lectureship program, its weekly radio program Talking History, and its development initiatives remains committed to serving these multiple publics.

OAH members in San José demonstrated that they were not going to let the inconvenience of moving the meeting and changing their travel plans interfere with the important business at hand. In fact, riding the shuttle from airport hotels to the convention center provided opportunities for discussions that might not have taken place had everyone been in one facility. There was a very palpable esprit de corps in the convention center hallways, at the receptions, and in the exhibit hall. Even when one shuttle bus driver managed to get lost and circled the San José airport three times, a couple of executive board members were in stitches and a former OAH president was at his sardonic best. San José ended up being a pleasant surprise for most first-time visitors. Its local history, its extensive restaurant scene, and its fabulous spring weather left most of us very glad that we had been able to practice our profession in the heart of Silicon Valley at the south end of San Francisco Bay.