Tektronix Retiree Volunteer Program – TRVP
The Tektronix Retired Volunteer Program was more commonly referred to as TRVP. It had its beginnings in 1997. This excerpt from their first newsletter describes their beginnings.
Their mission is described in this excerpt from the same newsletter.
You can read the whole newsletter with all the details of their beginning by clicking on this image to view the PDF.
TRVP held an annual reunion which was typically held at the Beaverton Elks Lodge. They organized occasional lectures. Volunteer Dave Brown presented one lecture in the late 1990s about the Video and Networking Division and their products in the building 58 cafeteria.
They got their start in building 55. They sent out a quarterly newsletter and had a website www.tekretirees.org. Their original ExTek Editorial Staff consisted of Dick Branjff, Eve Fitzgerald, Newt Espe, I.ouis Sowa, and Jennie Lou Werlein. Their original TRVP Development Team consisted of Warren Collier, Evelyn Marsh, Dick Duggan, Ed &Roz Srebnik, Jess Gard, and Hany Tanielian.
Tektronix funded the newsletters and their audience reached about 8000 individuals. They eventually moved to building 58 and later to building 13 just adjacent to the vintageTEK museum. Tektronix eventually ended their financial support and TRVP had to move to email for their newsletters which only reached only about 1/4 of their audience.
Like many volunteer organizations, their volunteers began to age out and new volunteers were hard to recruit. Covid forced a work from home and eventually they published their last newsletter in May of 2021 and disbanded their website in 2024.
The museum took over their space in building 13 and uses it as additional storage of artifacts including the printed and PDF TRVP newsletters. They had a good 24 years of keeping the retirees connected with each other and Tektronix.
We did find a ROBOT nametag that one individual says they were used at one of their reunions. It's quite unique and we posted it some time ago. We still have no information on this nametag but doubt it was official, but we like the sketch.