New Slate of Officers Elected by Board at Annual Membership Meeting
Incoming chairman Don Naimoli made the following brief statement to the members in attendance:
“A huge thank you to all of you who have stood up in support of the Park by joining The Friends of Valley Forge Park.  This has been a very exciting year of change for the Friends as an organization.  Just as the Park no longer can operate as it has in decades past, neither can the Friends.  It is now time to move to a new level and your board has taken up that challenge.  We must now position ourselves to be a true voice for the Park as well as a voice for the ever-increasing community of citizens that have a stake in this Park’s history and its environmental health.
This is no longer the park of years past.  No longer can we take for granted the financing from Congress so necessary to maintain the Park at a level that we all would like.  The pressures from urbanization that the Park endures on all sides continues to increase.  The number of people who use and enjoy the Park continues to rise – and that is a good thing but it does take a toll on the facilities and the landscape.  The ecosystem within the park is also a concern.  While the Park has begun the steps necessary to deal with the largest impact issues, there is more to be done.  All of this takes resources.  The Park needs the help of the Friends to raise those resources from private sources as well as to pound on the congressional door for help.
The community – our community - now has a Shared Stewardship with the Park.  It is our park and we must take some responsibility for it.  The Friends will lead the way in this endeavor.  To fulfill our responsibilities we must, once again, raise an army at Valley Forge - an army of citizens just like you. The Park needs every one of you now more than at any time in its 104-year history.  So I thank you for standing to be counted and I ask that you do me a favor.  Recruit one new member to the Friends – we, as well as the Park, need every single member we can muster.  Just ask that they stand to be counted – if they wish to do more that is welcomed but, at a minimum, just join with us”.

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War Comes to the Perkiomen Peninsula - Temporary Exhibit at Lower Providence Township Building
Pennsylvania’s historic Perkiomen Peninsula, now part of Lower Providence Township, played a key role during the Valley Forge winter encampment of 1777-1778.  From the arrival of the Continental Army in December 1777, the peninsula provided an important strategic location for defense of the encampment. As winter progressed, the land was the site of the newly organized Commissary Department, so vital for the survival of Washington’s army. The land also served as the staging area from which the army left the Valley Forge encampment and marched on to victory at the Battle of Monmouth in June 1778.
The temporary exhibit, War Comes to the Perkiomen Peninsula, offers the public the opportunity to understand the significant role that Lower Providence Township lands played during the historic Valley Forge encampment.
The exhibit, prepared by staff of Valley Forge National Historical Park, includes illustrations, photographs, and copies of actual letters and quotations written by officers of the Continental Army expressing the significance of the site. Archeological artifacts excavated from the encampment by the National Park Service complete the viewer’s understanding of the unique location.
War Comes to the Perkiomen Peninsula will be on display at the Lower Providence Township Municipal Office from September 6^th through December 2007.  The township offices are located at 100 Parkland Drive, Eagleville, Pennsylvania.

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Vault Tours Now Open to the Public at Valley Forge National Historical Park
For the first time ever two vaults at Valley Forge National Historical Park, storing more than 1,600 Revolutionary-era items, will be open to the public. Visitors will get the story of the American Revolution from a unique standpoint, the nature of the weapons and other artifacts with which the war was fought.  "It was the effective use of these weapons that allowed the common soldier of America's War for Independence to eventually achieve American
independence” said Museum Specialist Scott Houting.
Accumulated over a 20-year period by a Massachusetts historian, George C. Neumann, the collection was jointly purchased by the National Park Service and the Sun Oil Company of Philadelphia in 1978.  The items from the weapons collection consist of four separate, yet related, parts: Firearms; edged weapons that comprise the largest single grouping within the collection; auxiliary edged weapons like pole arms which were spear-point blades mounted on long wooden poles, and bayonets, belt axes and knives. The fourth category includes accoutrements and
accessories, like canteens, cooking and eating utensils, bullet molds, bottles, leather cartridge boxes and belts.
The collection is arranged as a study collection, not only documenting the weapons carried into battle, but the additional military equipment and personal items common to the Revolutionary soldier.  One article of particular interest is a letter dated December 23, 1777, from Gen. Washington to the Continental Congress requesting urgently needed supplies for the encampment to prevent the possible demise of his army.  “I am now convinced beyond a doubt that unless some great and capital change suddenly takes place, this army must inevitably be reduced to one or other of these three things, starve, dissolve or disperse in order to obtain subsistence in the best manner they can” wrote Washington in a nine-page letter to then Continental Congress President Henry Laurens of South Carolina.
Welcome Center, tours will be conducted every first and third Saturday at 11 a.m. starting September 15 and will be limited to eight people per group. Admission is free.  Reservations are required and can be made by calling 610-783-1020.

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