I did some research through the archives of board correspondence from 1967 and found a couple of things you may find interesting. First were the minutes of the board meeting where the Life Membership program was introduced in a motion (@ $100), tabled, then returned to the floor later (@ $130) and unanimously approved. Nothing interesting or informative about that. What was interesting is to see that in 1967, ARRL was losing money. In fact, it needed to sell about 200 LMs to fill the gap. The notes associated with the budget discussed the difficulty in the economy, and the reducing numbers within the licensed amateur ranks and ARRL members. So a budget deficit likely leading to a cash flow issue was a major - if not the - cause for the creation of life membership. Here's an excerpt from a member email I received today that touches on this subject: I am a life member, I don't know how much I paid for that or when, but I certainly have gained all the value from that payment. You should consider either discontinuing life memberships or calling it something else with a limited time period. You could have a 10 year, one time membership plan at a discount, or 20 year plan. But no more life members. Even if they die quickly after paying, it can't be a good fiscal situation for the League and it causes other dues paying members to essentially pay for them. One additional thing: we've been studying adjacent communities to amateur radio in the strategy working group, which has been doing awesome work. When I have spoken about ARRL lack of growth in the 1960's and ham radio (incl ARRL) looking down its nose at the CBers in the 1970's, I've been called to task as to the accuracy of this statement. Read the attached. Very telling how even in the mid 60's when most (or all) CBs were tube radios and the CB ranks hadn't even begun to explode yet, there was animosity between the two communities. The most telling thing, and hindsight is 20/20, is how badly they missed the future of CB expansion and how ineffective showing people how to convert their CBs from 11 to 10 meters was. Today, we cannot discount or disregard the GMRS community. It would be easy to say these are non-serious people with toys they bought from Walmart. Big mistake. Enjoy the fun facts! By the way, in 1967 the Friday board meeting ran from 9am to nearly midnight with mostly short breaks. They were grinding it out! David