News & Events

From the USNA Alumni Association: We are looking for the best design to use as our Army-Navy button this year. Navy fans are an amazing, creative, spirit-loving group—so show us what you got! Make it fun and eye-catching, family-friendly and all about NAVY! If your button is selected, you’ll have bragging rights for the year!

• SUBMIT YOUR DESIGN: Email your design to events@usna.com before 12 p.m. EST on 16 November. Include your name, address and phone number.  The top three entries will be chosen by staff and then posted on our social media platforms (Facebook and Instagram: @usnaalumni) for Navy fans to vote for their favorite from 17-19 November. The winner will be announced on social media and this space (USNAAA website) on 20 November.
• DESIGN SPECIFICATIONS: Button dimension final trim size is 3.5 inches. Live content area is 2.75 inches (copy not to exceed this area).
• ACCEPTABLE FILE FORMATS: Artwork can be accepted electronically as a jpeg, tif, eps or PDF. Electronic files must be 300 dpi.

Contest open to all Navy football fans! Share as desired among friends and family. See the USNAAA official contest page for details. Best of luck to all competitors!

 

Due to ongoing limitations on outdoor sporting events in Pennsylvania, this year’s Army-Navy game was moved to West Point in order to ensure that the Brigade of Midshipmen and Corps of Cadets could be in attendance. See the Oct 23rd press release for more details and remarks by the athletic director and Superintendent.

No official decision on fan attendance has been made at this time, but it is anticipated that attendance will be limited to only the Brigade and Corps. The game will be televised as scheduled. GO NAVY, NAVY, NAVY! BEAT ARMY, ARMY, ARMY!

Armed with a slew of Top 25 rankings, a decisive routing of Army, and a 10-2 record, we are headed to the Liberty Bowl in Memphis, TN, for the first time since 1981! Bowl game and ticket information (to purchase or donate tickets) is available here, or call 1-800-US4-NAVY during business hours. GO NAVY!

12/31 – Liberty Bowl v. Kansas State (@ 1545)

SIR, YOU NOW HAVE 5 DAYS UNTIL NAVY BEATS ARMY IN FOOTBALL, SIR!!! In lieu of an outdoor tailgater, we are having our annual class gathering for brunch the morning of the Army-Navy game in Philadelphia. If you’re in town for the game, come join your classmates for a no-host social (i.e., everyone covers themselves) at Tir Na Nog, which is centrally located to many hotels and public transportation near City Hall (see map).

For numerous reasons, hosting a tailgate in Philly is just too difficult and we like to meet up somewhere warm. Everyone can order what they want (see menu), it is kid friendly, and you can come and go as you please. Tir Na Nog is located on Arch Street in Center City, right adjacent to both the SEPTA and the subway lines, so we are just a short walk from the express train to the game. It isn’t required, but if you RSVP to Nagel Sullivan with how many will be your group, he can refine the size of our reservation.

BEAT ARMY!!!

Email sent via Classmail 11/12/18

Greetings classmates,

I’m emailing out our annual update this year (last year I tried the Facebook video feature but most didn’t take advantage of it so back to email). I will continue to use Classmail for the more “official” announcements to reach all of those not on Facebook. Remember that we also have a website (this one right here!) that Cara keeps up date date and has done a LOT of work to get up and running.

SAD NEWS

I hate to start off with unfortunate news, but this week we lost our classmate Jeff Dixon. Funeral service/visitation will be Thursday 1:00-4:00 in Westminster, MD. Please keep his family in your thoughts. (Link for details)

CLASS GIFT

For some time, we have been talking about our 30^th Reunion Class Gift and our effort to raise $600,000 is support of USNA. We have decided to lead the way with a new pilot for raising money for Class Gifts. Rather than rely on a few large donations, we want to push for record levels of smaller donations and much larger participation rates than is the norm. To that end, please consider making a minimum pledge of $30 a month for 96 months ($2,880 total over 8 years).

Our project consists of Conservation of the 1^st/2^nd Class Benches (see previous post for photos), Project Based Learning, Athletic Excellence, and the Naval Academy Fund. It does not seem unreasonable that we could get the 208 classmates we need to reach our $600K goal.  In fact, we would love to blow past that participation rate. Please spread the word and reach out to your Class Officers or Company Reps with any questions.

We had hope to get this drive up and running for on-line donations, but USNA Foundation issues with their software provider is delaying progress. Please excuse our 20^th century methods and please donate the old-fashioned way to help us reach our pledge goal before the Army-Navy Game! Just email,scan, fax (seriously? what is a fax?), or call in your pledges. Details are on the downloadable pledge form: Class of 1996 Pledge Form $30 for 96 months

POC is Brian Reardon (Brian.reardon@1996.usna.com)

Last note –  to those that give to other priorities (Rugby, Crew, D&B, Cyber, etc.) please consider supporting our Class Gift in addition to your other annual donations. To those that plan to give more than $2,880 over the next 8 years, feel free to up your $30 pledge, make larger annual gifts, or supplement your current giving by adding a pledge to our Class Gift.

25TH REUNION

The planning for our 25th Reunion is well underway. The Committee has chosen Air Force weekend, 01-03 October 2021, as the tentative dates for our event. This choice allows the group to move forward with planning and vendor negotiations. Expect the dates to be finalized when the football schedule is published in Winter 2021. Please feel free to contact me directly if you want to contribute or help with the planning.

POC is Thomas Leahy (leahyt@gmail.com)

COUNCIL OF CLASS PRESIDENTS (COCP)

This year, Cara Albright attended the COCP on 8 Nov. Although this was a very abbreviated meeting, there were a few things that she wanted to pass along:

• Suicide Prevention – This initiative began with ’98 in response to their own personal situation (50% of class losses that are not operational are due to suicide) and will be discussed at great length at the spring ’19 COCP.
• A lot of discussion on reunions (lessons learned, costs, alternative venues, etc…).  All these things have been fed back to our Reunion Planning Committee.

COMPANY REPS

We are still looking for a few more volunteers to be their company rep. It’s really not that much work but helps when we need to reach out to large groups.

Looking for reps for 7th, 26th, 29th, 32nd, and 34th still….

You get to help us track down your company mates and make sure they are getting all the information on class news.

FOOTBALL TAILGATE

Another awesome year is almost over (JUST HAVE TO BEAT ARMY!!). Each week is like a mini-reunion and we often get people that are on work travel for the week to stay an extra night to come to the game on Saturday.

The donations in the tailgate kitty pay for all of the sustainment (~$3000 a year). This year, all of the prices went up pretty significantly but we are still about breaking even. All the funds we receive to the paypal account help to pay for any of the larger upgrades (e.g., eventually we will need a new trailer, etc). If you feel like throwing a few dollars that way to help make our spot one of the most envied tailgates, please send them to paypal at USNA1996Tailgater@gmail.com

POC is Nikki Battaglia (n.battaglia96@gmail.com)

There may be a few 96 jerseys (link here) left if you didn’t get a chance to get your personalized one!

ARMY/NAVY GAME

As usual, many of us will hit the town Friday night. Some of us will try to meet up so let me know if you want to join. Saturday, I’ll do the standard no-host social at Tir na Nog in Philadelphia starting about 10:00. Every year they allow us to hog a section of the restaurant to stay warm, eat, and drink before the game. Hopefully the weather will be better than it was last year.

 

And with that, I’ll wrap up this update.

Nagel Sullivan

Class President

BEAT ARMY!

Three more days until we sink the Army, sink the Army grey! Here’s the latest gameday timeline from Navy Athletics:

This is the link to see the full email, which includes parking information and the stadium bag policy. Army-Navy 2017

See you Saturday at the game! BEAT ARMY!!!

Sir, you now have 8 days and a wake up until Navy beats Army in football, sir!!! It’s almost my favorite week of the year: Army Week! I’m sure you’ve all seen the HELM YEAH video circulating on social media, which is the latest in a series of installments we’ve enjoyed by ENS Rylan Tuohy and crew and I just can’t watch it enough times.

Will Navy beat Army? HELM YEAH!

The T-shirts look wicked cool, and are still in stock as of today. I wasn’t quick enough with my trigger finger on this year’s Mules Can’t Swim tees, so I made sure I got one of these. Check ’em out here: http://www.rylantuohy.com/store

There’s a ton of events going on next Saturday, from our annual brunch at Tir Na Nog (approx. 0930) to the ESPN’s College Gameday broadcast just outside the stadium and a ’96 tailgater in Lot F. Bust out your cow bells, spirit buttons and goat hats and see you all out and about in Philadelphia! Stadium gates open at 1100, march-on of the Brigade is at 1215 and kickoff at 1500. Spirit gear is authorized… get pumped to BEAT ARMY! See you at the game, ’96!

Sir, you now have 10 days and a wake up until Navy beats Army in football, sir!!! Hope to see lots of ’96ers out and about in Philadelphia next Saturday for the 118th Army-Navy game. The wx forecast looks awesome, the uniforms look highly badass, and the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy is ripe for the picking! If you’re looking for a place to meet up with classmates, Johnny Hartnett is hosting an on-site tailgater this year prior to the game. Look for his setup in Lot F of Lincoln Financial Field starting at 1000 (map below). You can RSVP to him via the Facebook event he created on our class FB page, and he’ll also be tweeting gameday updates using #BeatArmy96 (or follow him @FlyNavyHartnett). BEAT ARMY!!!

Officially licensed 2017 Army-Navy gear is available through classmate Rob Hubert’s online business. Shop https://www.thehungrypenguin.com/collections/mules-cant-swim before their awesome gear is sold out!

• USNA Website
• NavySports.com

©2013-2024 United States Naval Academy Alumni Association
Class of 1996