Mike Meier <<Mike>> writes:

As we mark the one year anniversary of the loss of Rob Kells, our friend and business partner for more than 30 years, we’d like to take a moment to reflect, to say thank you, and to share some thoughts with you on where we are, and where we’re headed.

First, we’d like to thank all of you for the support you extended to Rob during his nearly two year battle with his illness. Your thoughts, your prayers, your phone calls and emails, meant a great deal to him, and to us.

And we’d like to thank you for the support you have shown to Wills Wing, both during Rob’s illness and since his passing.

In his position as president, and head of sales at Wills Wing, Rob was the most visible “face” of the company, and his natural and persistent inclination to treat each customer as a personal friend was a big part of how Wills Wing pilots felt about their relationship to the company. We know that many of you were concerned about what would happen to Wills Wing without Rob’s presence. At the same time, most of us learned early on in our participation in hang gliding that we could lose a close friend at any time, and that life does go on, however hard it may be to imagine that it will.

And Wills Wing has, and will go on. We are fully committed to the future, and to moving forward. Steve Pearson has assumed the lion’s share of Rob’s responsibilities for conducting demo days, and we have already held six successful demo events thus far in 2009. Steve, Mike and Linda have picked up the remainder of Rob’s administrative and customer support functions, and each of the test pilots are flying a few extra gliders a month to make up for the ones Rob can no longer fly. We saw a significant downturn in sales that began when the worst of the financial crisis hit early in 2008, but that decline bottomed out and began to recover early in this year, and we’ve seen higher sales levels than last year in each of the last four months. We’ve kept our delivery times reasonably low this year, we’ve enjoyed some significant successes with the T2’s and T2C’s, and the company is on solid footing in all respects. In all, we are re-dedicated to being the best company we can be; to designing and building the best gliders, to providing the best service of which we are capable, and to treating each of our customers as a friend. And we are fully confident that, with your continued support, we’ll succeed at that.

We won’t forget Rob. We acknowledged his memory with a brief program during our Wallaby event this spring. The USHPA has created a special award in his memory. James Tindle ran the first annual Rob Kells Memorial Competition this past spring. We will remember Rob every time we get together with old friends to celebrate hang gliding, and every time we make new friends in the same pursuit. And we’ll go on.

And we thank you all for being a part of it.