b"C H A P T E R T W Ospoke his mind, especially about FCWs taking on too many tasks. Lets reel it in, he urged. More often than not, that advice has been hard for the board to takethere simply have been too many relevant challenges. Denn had just left FCWs board when another resident, a Vietnam War veteran, was nominated in '99 to come on as a director. Native New Yorker James Blankenship served in Vietnam for ten months as a public information specialist; at his discharge in November 1968, his grade was specialist 4th class.Casting about for a civilian job, he happened to connect in March '69 with a small Manhattan-based public relations firm. I started out as a grunt, he says, and when I left in April 1992 I was executive vice- president.When Blankenships wife, Jane, wasOn his discharge from duty in the assigned to London, he joined her, keepingVietnam War, Jim Blankenship busy by going back to college for two yearsstarted as a grunt in public relations, winding up as executive vice- to steep himself in ecology. He even did apresident of his firm.Now an FCW PR stint as a board member of thevice president, he is explaining a London chapter of the Salmon and Troutmeasuring device to fellow Water Association. Returning to the U. S. in MayWatcher Joan Dillon.1997, the Blankenships gravitated to Chatham, where Jane Blankenship had summered ever since she was three years old. While she worked weekdays in Boston, he scouted out volunteer opportunities on the Lower Cape, winding up on the board of Friends of the Cape Cod National Seashore; it had been actively searching for someone with a communications background. The fit was good: Jim Blankenship had almost 30 years worth of pertinent experience. That track record was just as appealing to FCW, and he himself had been looking for a way to get to know what was going on in Chatham, the town where the Blankenships were going to make their home. He accepted a bid to join FCWs board, and in short months, new information links to people in Chathams dispersed corners were being shaped on the anvil of Jim Blankenships background in publicity at the national level.Relevance Is AgelessOf the 21 men and women on FCWs current board, thirteen have reached their Sixties or Seventies. On that board are eleven men, nine of whom29"