The Chicago Vintage MG Club and the Chicagoland MG Owners Club celebrated the Christmas season together with their annual dinner party on Saturday, December 3rd. The annual Christmas Party is normally a larger affair but this year saw almost 90 MG enthusiasts attend.

The affair was at Bela Vista Banquets, a new location for the clubs in Bensenville, Illinois. The room was fully decorated in Christmas lights and wreaths and, of course, the flags of the USA, England, Wales, Scotland and the United Kingdom. Victor L’Heureux was the Master of Ceremonies. Susan Arata and her mom, Jane Simpson (Jane was fresh off the plane from Congelton, England) handled check-in and door prize tickets handouts.

Ralph Arata provided a power point slide show which combined the year’s events from both MG clubs – approx. 300 slides!



It was great event and especially having Win Gould’s “Vintage MG” folks join the event once again. This joint association between the Vintage and Chicagoland clubs appears to this writer to really maturing to a point where more joint activities should be considered. It’s really great to have both Chicago clubs together making

Feedback from event participants has been very, very positive liking the food, the efficient monitoring of people to the buffet line and especially that we had a bar tender for the full evening ……… and drinks at very reasonable prices!

After dinner Vic introduced a special visitor, Santa Claus , who provided a brief Power Point review of “Whatever Happened to Ed Elf” (Ed Elf visited the club’s party last year) and then presided over the door prize and grab bag gift handouts (Santa likes that kind of stuff).

Next year’s planning is already underway with Bela Vista again reserved for that first Saturday in December.

Happy New Year to All!

~~Ralph Arata  

New CMGC Officers Even though this year’s election was uncontested, it is no less important than any other year. First off we’d like to thank our outgoing President Bill Reece for all the time, hard work and dedication to the club. Dino Perez is welcomed in as our new President coming up from the Vice-President position last year. George Phariss is new to an officer position and will be assuming the role of Vice-President. Ralph Arata and Victor L’Heureux are continuing on with their roles of Treasurer and Secretary respectively. As in the past two years, we utilized the Driveline to distribute the election ballots. This method is proving to be an effective method in getting out the ballots to the members. The club officers wish to thank all members submitting your ballots on time for this election. A thank you goes out to Dave ‘Cowboy’ Bralich for again serving as our election official.