Our purpose this afternoon is to take note of the fiftieth anniversary of our formation as the Cotton Disease Council and to celebrate the occasion in a suitably solemn and scholarly manner. The program committee has allowed me a few minutes in which to get our activities started. I choose to use that time to recount some of the circumstances in which we were born, to recall something of the organizational and procedural structure in which we were to work, to list the major projects to be undertaken, to show briefly how that list has grown, and to note a few achievement highlights.