Blast from the past photo time. With this thread sitting here in front of me, some photos just arrived the other day from friend Michael French who was going through an old hard-drive. These were taken about 13 years ago, just after Phil Roettinger died on the old SMAGTO range. Some of the founders of our current SMAGTO IPSC Club.

From left to right, Aurelio (if this Club was the Sons of Anarchy, he's our "Tig"), Phil Maher with his S&W 669, Erika -- probably the First Lady of Mexican Practical Shooting and Michael's wife -- and Doc, the owner of the Colt Detective Special posted above. Doc's a former mayor of San Miguel and still politically active enough to help the Club squash any stupid local political moves against it. Doc and Phil Maher were close friends.



Erika with Phil Maher's 669. Phil's moving quickly to bring her more of his shells to shoot off. Phil used to drive up to the border and stock up his trunk with necessities. We always used to laugh that the Colonel brought down all that ammo and then let Erika weedle it out of him. But he liked it I think. He was very fond of Erika even though she tends to rule the World around her with an iron fist. Some members say she defines "over-domineering" but I think they take her too seriously. Phil Maher used to dote on her. She ended up with several of his guns when he died and those guns are around to this day.



We have no photos of Phil Roettinger. It's amazing to me that these appeared. We were so busy having fun we rarely stopped to photograph ourselves. I'm glad Michael sent me these, I was probably there the day they were taken.