The 65th Annual Convention for GAWDA (Gases and Welding Distributors Association) opened at the Grand Hyatt Convention Centre in San Antonio, Texas yesterday.
Outgoing President Britt Lovin welcomed over 400 delegates to the gathering of the distributors from throughout the US, as the four-day foray got off to a successful start.
Lovin admitted in his opening speech that when he took on the role last year in the Bahamas, he had thought to himself, “can I have a different year to be President?”
He confessed he could not have expected possibly the most dramatic time in GAWDA’s history – certainly in the past 20 years – as he went on to explain that soon after he had stepped into the Presidential shoes, the Dow Jones Index dropped 2399 points, the US economy nose dived and GAWDA started to lose members.
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