The original logo for the Shuttle Heritage.  When filling out the chapter paperwork for Starfleet, Stewart came to the blank for the shuttle's name, and chose "Heritage" from the spine of a history textbook on her bookshelf.

In the Fall of 1990, Sharon Stewart, a student at Florida State University in Tallahassee, FL, was inspired by her love of Star Trek.  She wanted to form a fan club where she and others who shared a passion for Gene Roddenberry's creation could unite.  But rather than form an isolated club, Stewart chose to initiate a chapter of Starfleet, an organized alliance of  Trek fan organizations from all over the world.

Every new chapter in Starfleet must start out as a shuttlecraft, under the nine month tutelage of an established club, and the Khai Tam started out no differently.  Sponsored by the USS Guardian in Cocoa, FL, the Shuttle Heritage, NCC 26244/1, was officially launched on June 27, 1991.

Right out of the gate, Shuttle Heritage was already not your typical chapter of Starfleet.  Seeing the benefits it would bring a new and struggling club, Stewart also established the Heritage as a student organization of FSU.  This provided us with regular on-campus meeting space, free advertising on campus media and a token budget.  But being a student organization also added additional obstacles.

FSU understandably required all its student organizations to maintain at least 51% student membership.  Now the Heritage already had that student-group feel, by which I mean we were always broke.  But then to maintain our University status, we needed to recruit students, whose lack of cash is legendary.  This often left Heritage's ledgers in the red.

The Heritage was up to the task, though, and not only maintained its member/student ratio, but also managed to meet Starfleet's requirements for membership.  We were well on our way to becoming a full-fledged ship.  But with our FSU requirements met, a new  and unexpected challenge awaited us.  When the majority of your members are students, it is inevitable that some of them will be headed home for the summer, leaving us with a skeleton crew for nearly four months out of the year.

The name "Khai Tam" (pronounced kie-tom), suggested by founding Shuttle Heritage member, Lucy Nguyen, is Vietnamese for "brave heart."  The fact that it sounds vaguely Klingon in origin was merely a happy coincidence. 

Fortunately, it was in this infancy that the membership of the Heritage/Khai Tam developed its uncanny ability to overcome financial, personal and political obstacles in order to excel as a cohesive group.  And in the meantime they developed a compelling instinct to party, and even now, Heritage/Khai Tam parties are the stuff of legends.

But even with those early obstacles behind them, the road ahead wasn't all fun and games.  In March of 1992 the ship held its first election for commanding officer.  Until that time, the ship had been led by its founding force, Sherry Stewart.  With the creation of the ship's early Bylaws, it became mandatory that the Commanding Officer and Executive Officer be elected each year.  This was a black time in the history of the Khai Tam.  The membership was split almost evenly on the two candidates and their running mates.

Matt & Sherry at a meeting just a few weeks prior to the ship's first elections

On the one side were Sherry Stewart (CO) and Matt Henry (XO), the incumbent command team.  In fact they were the only command team that the ship had ever known and they represented stability and maintenance of the status quo.

It had been Stewart's tenacity and efforts that made a Tallahassee chapter of Starfleet a reality.  What would happen to the shuttle if its founder and her assistant were removed from the helm?  That was the question that Stewart's supporters were asking, and for a good reason.

Laurie and Jon making plans for future, pending the outcome of the election, which was held at this meeting.

Because on the other side were Jon Reddick (CO) and Laurie Copetti (XO), a young untested command team, who had been recruited by Stewart herself, and whose only credentials were their records of active membership in the shuttle thus far.  Copetti was serving as the Department Chief for Sci/Med, and Reddick the assistant Chief of Security.

The Reddick/Copetti platform was best represented in their slogan, "A ship in its harbor is safe, but that's not what ships are for." (Incidentally, a variation on that slogan is now the Khai Tam's official motto.)  Jon and Laurie imagined much more for the ship than simply a fun fan club.  They envisioned a force in the community that could perhaps, in some small way, help bring about the world that Roddenberry had envisioned.

One of the twenty-one actual ballots cast in the 1992 CO/XO election.

Each crew member of the Heritage felt very strongly about the team he supported, and as the date for the election drew near, tension was at an all-time high.  There were many impromptu "debates" among members supporting opposite platforms, and they seldom ended happily.  But when the dust settled and the votes were counted, the Reddick team won by a narrow margin -- 12 to 9.

But then after the majority had spoken, Stewart was reluctant to give up the helm.  Dragging the results through miles of unnecessary Starfleet red tape, it was not until July 12, 1992 that a change of command finally took place.  A brief note in that month's issue of the Khai Tam's newsletter reads, "Commander Matt Henry officially passed the gavel of command to Captain Jon Reddick and Commander Laurie Copetti at the 9207.12 meeting.  Captain Stewart had company from overseas and was therefore unable to attend this meeting.  Congratulations to Jon and Laurie!"

Newly promoted Captain Stewart and Commander Henry accept the Khai Tam's commissioning from Admiral Deborah Nelson on April 4, 1992.  The Khai Tam is launched!

Aware that the election results and finally the command change itself had taken their emotional toll on Stewart, many of Reddick and Copetti's first actions were clearly intended to try to heal those bruises, and bring both Stewart and her disheartened suporters back into the fold.  Unfortunately, sometimes such intentions simply don't work.  Although Commander Sherry Stewart accepted the ship's commissioning on April 4, 1992 (at which time our name changed officially from Heritage to Khai Tam), it was not long before she would leave the ship.

Some have suggested that Stewart parted ways with the Khai Tam because she felt her ship had been taken from her.  Although Reddick and Copetti ran for command because they had a different vision and direction for the ship, one can certainly see how a person who worked so hard to bring the chapter to life might feel slighted when the membership chooses someone else as it's elected leader.  But despite the bad blood which had developed between Stewart and the ship, we owe her a debt of gratitude.  And we are very grateful, for she planted the seed from which the Khai Tam of today has grown.

When Stewart left the Khai Tam, several other members (most probably Stewart's supporters and among the minority who voted for her) also dropped out of active duty.  Though this emigration slashed the ship's existing membership to nearly half, it would turn out to be the fresh start that the Reddick/Copetti command team needed to set the ship on its new course.

The Qapla' Project

When a shuttle is commissioned as a ship, its members must choose a ship class.  For example, Kirk's Enterprise was a Consitution class ship and Picard's a Galaxy class, but the Khai Tam didn't want to go with either those or any other established ships in the Star Trek universe.

This was partly becuase we've made it a policy to be difficult, but mostly because of our heritage (no pun intended).  On the Khai Tam, as on many Starfleet ships, we adopt personas that fit our personalities.  During the early years when we were Shuttle Heritage, many crew members, nearly half in fact, had adopted a Klingon persona.  There was much debate over whether we shouldn't just choose a Klingon class of ship.

During this point in time, Star Trek: The Next Generation was in its first run and the Klingons and Federation were at peace.  The members reasoned that if we were no longer at war, then there would certainly be a sharing of technology between the two sides.  What was finally agreed upon was that we would design our own class of ship which would share Klingon and Federation technologies.

The very first concept drawing of the Qapla' class Khai Tam, circa 1991.  Drawn by Jon Reddick during a Shuttle Heritage meeting, the vessel already shows the basic Federation saucer/Klingon propulsion design that stayed with the class through all the changes right up to the finished project.

The concept was so outlandish that Starfleet's Department of Technical Services (DTS), which must approve a chapter's choice of class and assign it an NCC number, at first denied our request to be a Qapla' class vessel.  It wasn't until a more fleshed-out set of specifications were submitted that they finally approved, but then only as an "Experimental Class," hence the NCC number assigned was a multiple of 1000 (you'll recall that the Excelsior in Star Trek III was an Experimental Class, NX-2000).

And that's where the Qapla' class stayed for over a year: begrudgingly approved by Starfleet, but restricted for any other chapter to choose -- destined to be the first, and last, of her line.  That is, until the Fall of 1993.

The second-class status which the Qapla' held with Starfleet had been gnawing at the Khai Tam Engineering department's pride for over a year, and they were determined to rectify the situation.  DTS had claimed that the design was "not plausible" and "would never fly" -- and they knew that the only way to convince them otherwise was to fully document the "Treknology" behind the design.  And that's what they set out to do.

Thanks to them not only do we all share the pride that comes from other people looking at what our members have made and thinking it's cool, we have the cool security of no longer having to scrub for money. As with any organization, recruiting has always been a major concern of the Khai Tam. In November of 1991, while still the Shuttle Heritage, we built a float for the Florida State University's Homecoming Parade [picture of the homecoming parade shuttle]. We think it looked pretty good considering the rather short notice we had to put it together. You must remember that we were still very poor and young and did the best that we could. And, like most clubs, I'm sure, we've been quite a presence at every new Trek movie that has come out since the inception of the Khai Tam. This is especially effective because we're always in uniform. It is made even more effective by the presence of our Captain in full Klingon makeup. Cuts a pretty dashing figure there, doesn't he? [picture of Jon outside of the theater in Klingon garb] And the few Trek-O-Rama's we've had here in Tallahassee have been a great recruiting boon. Of course, one of the most enjoyable recruiting ventures we've had must have been HooterTrek. The manager that ran the local Hooter's restaurant was a Trek fan and a couple of times he gave the entire porch over to a mini convention. People would sit around and eat and drink and be merry while watching Trek videos. And, of course, if they hear something about the Khai Tam in the process, well............ But one of the things that the Reddick team has made their priority in the years since their election has been community service. Over the years we have taken part in several community service activities. One of the oldest ongoing activities has been the cleanup of the first three miles of a local nature trail. Something else we've been doing for quite some time is visiting the pediatric ward of a local hospital. We go up there in full uniform and take comic books and such to the kids on the ward. We'll sit and entertain the kids for a while so that Mom and/or Dad can go get a soda or whatever. The kids and the parents just love it. Of course, we're very active in Starfleet's Stampede. We've been collecting coupons for years. For a time we were giving them to the local battered women's shelter. Now we're sending them overseas to the military in conjunction with the Fleet project. We've helped build a few houses for the local Habitat for Humanity and we've helped the local children's science center open their doors. Another thing the Khai Tam is heavily into is the education of its members. We regularly have away missions to places like the Florida State University Marine Lab, the local natural history museum, the Kennedy Space center, historical naval exhibits and so forth. The Khai Tam is proud of itself and proud of its members. Over the years they've garnered many awards such as : [ list awards here] The Marine Strike Group of the Khai Tam is one of the most respected Strike Groups in the nation [ picture here of strike group doing the honor guard thing]. The Khai Tam has grown a lot in the past seven years. But there are still myriads of areas for us to explore. We've started a new form of recruiting over the past several years - the natural method [link here should be to medical's nursery page which will contain pictures of babies born to (or adopted by - don't want to leave anyone out) KT members since it's inception). We're constantly looking for new community services and new avenues of education for our members. And always we remember that a harbor is no place for the Khai Tam to be. Quapla! 

It wasn't too far into the life of the Heritage/Khai Tam that we decided that we would give each of our six departments responsibility for a party every other month.  And we have had some great ones.  I remember fondly the pool party at the Captain's place where we filled an empty garbage can full of water and tried to drench him with it.  Of course, we weren't thinking clearly about the fact that he could move so much faster without carrying that water.  And then there was the Pon Farr Orgy. There's something almost mystical about staying up late into the night around a big bonfire (that we've built in someone's backyard no less) and talking Trek and drinking late into the night.  Especially when you almost broke your foot earlier that day in a testosterone-driven dive for a volleyball.

Or the beach party where one of the members dove into water that was much too shallow and another one got sun poisoning but refused to let us take him to the hospital.

And who among us at the time could forget the June 1992 Rites of Ascension for Captain Reddick. We didn't have actual Klingon painsticks but we did have big wooden fraternity-type paddles. And after Reddick successfully proved...