February 13, 2004

Dear Friend of Flying Santa,

We find it necessary to inform you of a situation that has recently arisen for the Friends of Flying Santa. George Morgan a longtime member of the Flying Santa program has recently resigned from the Friends of Flying Santa and begun operating a commercial lighthouse touring business. He is now competing directly with the Friends fundraising tours and is promoting a similar Maine lighthouse bus tour in the same month as ours. We believe that he is using our non-profit organization's mailing list without our permission to solicit customers for his new venture. We sincerely apologize for any misuse of your names and addresses.

We wish to make it perfectly clear that Mr. Morgan's "for profit" business is in no way connected to our non-profit Friends of Flying Santa 501c3 organization. None of the money generated by Mr. Morgan's tours goes to support the Flying Santa mission.

The Friends of Flying Santa is made up entirely of volunteers. We are dependent on the revenue generated by our lighthouse tours and cruises to pay for the expenses involved in maintaining the annual flights to New England's Coast Guard stations and lighthouses. So far this year we have made plans for a three-day lighthouse tour of Maine (May 21-23), a one-day Rhode Island lighthouse bus tour (July 24) and another three-day Connecticut tour for the fall. We hope you will continue to support us in our fundraising activities and can assure you that, as always, all funds raised will go towards the direct support of carrying out the Friends of Flying Santa mission which now includes the awarding of scholarships to Coast Guard dependents.

The Friends of Flying Santa board of trustees remains as strong as ever and has a combined total of over 50 years of involvement with the Flying Santa tradition. Our Santas Dave Waldrip and Tom Guthlein, who started their Flying Santa roles in 1994 and 1997, respectively, plan to continue to don the red suit in the years to come. We greatly appreciate your ongoing commitment and devoted support to the Friends and we apologize for the unpleasantness of the current situation.

Sincerely,