Saturday Night Banquet - 2009

The SEA-PAC banquet is a time to reacquaint yourself with hams from around the division, the nation and the world.

Banquet Prize - There will be two special prize drawings for banquet attendees. The banquet prizes are an ICOM IC-T90A Tri-band HT and a Kenwood TH-F6A Tri-band HT.

Win two free tickets to the Banquet - Are you creative? Do you have an artistic side aching to be expressed? Enter our SEA-PAC Pin Design Contest and you could win two free tickets to the Saturday Night Banquet, plus fame and admiration from all of your fellow HAMS.

Paul Linnman is our guest speaker for 2009 at the SEA-PAC Banquet.

Best known as the reporter who brought the world the “exploding whale” story and his feel-good “Spirit of the Northwest” features on local residents, Linnman began his career at KATU in 1967 and spent all but five years of his broadcast career at the station.

Lyndon B. Johnson was president, Otis Redding was riding the charts with his hit single “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay,” and an assassin ended the life of Martin Luther King Jr. the year Linnman stepped in front of a television camera for the first time. And what a year it was for the 21-year-old fledgling reporter who always thought he wanted to be a newspaper sports reporter, until he was told if he didn’t have a great memory, he would never make it in the business. Good memory or not, Linnman had a knack for condensing a complicated story and telling it on air in a matter of a few seconds.

It was an election year in 1968, and one of Linnman’s first jobs was to spend a week with each of the presidential candidates, all of whom spent extensive time visiting Oregon. His career has been filled with sports stars, entertainment figures, international dignitaries. He had dinner at the White House, flew with the Blue Angels, trekked though Nepal, attended festivals in Japan and tried out for the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team as part of the job.

Paul Linnman is an accomplished author with two books published:

“The Exploding Whale: And Other Remarkable Stories from the Evening News” (Graphic Arts Center, $16.95). As a young reporter, Paul Linnman was sent to the Oregon coast in 1970 to cover the story of state officials trying to dispose of a rotting whale carcass in the sand.

“Oregon Golf” (Graphic Arts Center, $29.95) An avid golfer, Linnman offers a close look at each golf course in Oregon. The book covers both the courses and the interesting features and history of the locations.

Paul and wife Vickie live in Portland and are the proud parents of 4 grown sons and grandparents to three.