Chapter History

Redstone Arsenal, located in Huntsville Alabama, has become the center of the universe for Army Aviation Acquisition and Logistics due to the BRAC of 1996. Since that time Redstone has had a constant influx of former Night Stalkers, and those that have supported the Night Stalkers since their inception. Over the years several former Night Stalkers would get together socially in the Huntsville area and the idea was born to “formalize” this group sometime during 2007.  A similar group had been formed in Tampa and the Night Stalker Association was slowly realizing the need to expand the organization in recognition of the several locations around the country where Night Stalkers were started to gather. An old mailing list of Huntsville based Night Stalkers was used to send out invites to the first “chapter social” in Feb of 2007 during the Cribbins Symposium and about 36 of us gathered at Bench Warmer II on University to officially kick-off the Huntsville Chapter. As cheap as the drinks were, we decided to find a place where you didn’t have to step over the covered broken furniture to get to the bar and moved the next get-together to Bison’s on Madison Blvd. Bison’s seemed to work for most of the spring and summer until the service became less than prompt so we set our sights on some new digs, this time settling for Finnegan’s Irish Pub off of South Memorial Parkway. Finnegan’s is a woody, smoky, dark, friendly type of place and served us well until the spring of 2009 when we decided to find sunlight again. This time, with a tip from the Finnegan’s barmaid, we headed off to LeeAnn’s downtown; where we continue to enjoy the outside patio, good food, and occasional train roaring down the tracks next to us. Somehow we have always found a place where we can fire up a stogie to go with the “there I was” stories. Who knows where we will be next…

In parallel with our search for worthy watering holes, some of our distinguished alumni were working on the NSA Tiger Team to take the organization to the national level. Rich Enderle and Randy Cochran worked with other “displaced” Night Stalkers to assist the NSA in the development of a new Constitution and By-Laws, which would authorize and provide guidance for the establishment of Local Chapters. The vote to adopt these new documents was finally ready in Nov 2008 and passed by a majority of the NSA membership. Huntsville was ready for this outcome and held elections for the first Huntsville Chapter Executive Board in Dec 2008 with the following results; Rich Enderle-President, Russ Hunter-Vice President, Julio Driggs-Treasurer, and Greg “shady” Rogers-Secretary. We immediately petitioned the NSA to approve our request to be designated an NSA Local Chapter-Society and were approved in January 2009.

This is the history of the Huntsville chapter and how it all began. In October of 2009 the NSA-H website was born.

2017 Update – We have completely revamped the webpage!!! The Chapter continues to thrive; we have provided over $20,000.00 in scholarships to the NSA and NSA-H recipients. We have donated over $5000 to local veterans organizations in the past two years. We continue to hold our monthly socials on the Third Thursday of each month at the numerous watering holes and local breweries. Check our calendar links and Facebook page often for updates.