On February 17th, the Atons celebrated another year of brotherhood with our annual Officers Banquet. At this event we also inducted our new members, officers, and awarded our Friends of the Atons awards and Honorary Associates and Members.

Held at the relatively new bar, Pi, located in South East Minneapolis, we changed the event from an evening dinner to an afternoon brunch. This earlier schedule seems to resonate well with the 40 plus attendees.

Click the read more link below to see more pictures from the banquet

Along with three "Friends of the Atons," we also awarded an Honorary Associate Membership to PJ Knight, the longest continuous serving member of the Knights of Leather club. She has been one of the rocks of our local leather community with her 23 years of volunteer work and leadership.

We also awarded our newly created class of Honorary Member to Steve Lenius, who has really been one of the faces of the Minnesota leather community. He is the columnist for Lavender Magazine's Leather Life column, he was the Chief Instigator for 2007's Leather Leadership Conference here in Minneapolis, and he is just an all around wonderful man. We managed to completely surprise him with this honor, even though I was calling him asking for his shirt sizes and such, since the honorary membership comes with a vest with the honorary member patch pre-installed.

Following the inductions and awards we took several group photos, staring with the 2008 Officers. Yes, that's our pledge, rick, in the front, wearing nearly nothing.