Rotary Club of Casper WY
Meeting Summary
01/04/2016
Club President John Starnes called the meeting to order at 12:26 welcoming all Rotarians and guests to Rotary. He also noted that Dusty Johnson retired a month ago and left for Arizona for a month but is now back with us, congratulations Dusty. Also Sandy Widmer is back from the Rose Parade where she rode on the Farmers Insurance float.
Inspiration, Pledge, 4-Way Test:
Erin Essary
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Greeters:
Tara Short and Dave McNulty were our greeters and Dave introduced guests:
Martha Rakestraw introduced Pastor Mary Bates;
Robin Mundell introduced our City Manager VH McDonald
Kevin Hawley introduced Jake Atchinson from the Loveland CO Mtn. View Rotary Club;
Maribeth Plocek introduced Sheryl Foland;
Song and merriment:
Dennis Lower treated us to a good chuckle, after which Gary Pehrson had us all Rise and sing “America The Beautiful”.
Membership:
Crystal MacGuire, sponsored by Joe MacGuire, traded her red badge for a shiny new Blue Badge.
Dennis Lower received his sponsor pin for sponsoring Brett Johnson.
Family of Rotary:
Tara Short announced that Dennis Gazdiewich is having surgery tomorrow so please keep him in your thoughts and prayers.
Tom Lockhart let us know that his first Great Grandson was born this past week.
Robin Mundell said that one of our past exchange students from 2000, Cher Quadro, gave birth to her second son on Dec 22 and all are doing well.
Rotarians of the week:
Doug McLughlin let us know that Clarke Turner also retired this past month.
Eric Easton nominated Denise Prugh for her work on setting up the Christmas party and getting all of the gifts for the kids. He also nominated everyone who helped with the wrapping party; Angela Emory, Greg Dixon, John Starnes, Daniel Starnes and friend Tony, Tom and Robin Bromley, and Eric and Dawn Easton.
Brian Deurloo nominated Mike McIntosh for being Santa at the Christmas Party.
Announcements:
- Robin Mundell announced that she has a box of Rotary apparel and hats in a box so please help yourself to anything you might want.
- Jim Porter announced that the Rotary Rose Parade last chance to register is January 15th so please call Worldwide Travel and get registered.
Program:
President John Starnes started the program with a Rotary Minute from You Tube on What is Rotary, you can see the video at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbLI-vQva30 President Starnes said that he played the video so that we can remember what Rotary really is about as there is a lot more to Rotary. He gave us an update on our club and what our club has been doing over the past six months for us to see the service we provide for our community and the world. There are a lot of things that Rotary has done for our community over the years and he wants us to all know that we are engaged in the community. He asked us to look at the organization chart in the middle of our Rotary club directory that
Liz Becher has just given out to everyone. He said that there are some vacancies in the organization so if there is something that you feel you would like to volunteer to help with to please let someone on the board know or speak with the board member that heads that avenue of service. He then started going through each avenue of service starting with the Casper Rotary Foundation which is chaired by
Richard Schwahn. The accomplishments for this avenue of service are,
- We have six new members in the Paul Harris Society,
- We are sponsoring one outbound exchange student for 2016-2017 school year,
- We are currently hosting one inbound exchange student,
- We had our first successful completion of a District Grant in July in the amount of $4,000, to be used for an informational kiosk at Rotary Park.
Next he spoke about the membership avenue of service chaired by Tara Short, in the past six months;
- We have had one or two new member orientation meetings and will have another one soon at Jim Fowler’s home.
- We have inducted twelve new members since July 1st but have lost thirteen members to resignations since then. We are still about 200 members.
We have some open areas in this avenue of service; recruitment, club clothing, retention and vocation so if you would like to take on one of these areas please let Tara know.
The next avenue is service projects, chaired by Brian Deurloo, International projects falls under this and a few weeks ago we had Dave Simonson speak to us about the projects going on in Boquete Panama.
- The club has committed $5,000 to assist with solar lighting in Panama and we have also had many members donate money to help with the building of schools in Boquete so our International project is moving forward.
- Rotary park is another project and we will soon be having a meeting with an update on that project but in the past six months the following has been accomplished: The Conservation Corp finished the trail from the bridge to the top of the hill, KWHS football players helped haul equipment and supplies up the hill, there was a park wide trash pick-up, we installed two benches and a picnic table with the boy scouts, installed a bench at the base of the cardiac arrest hill, a bench up by the waterfall on each side, another bench put in by the Boy Scouts at the southeast corner of the park and a swath of land was cleared by Rotarians to accommodate the trail. We have a grant from the county to help with additional parking area, moved large stones and installed cables along the trail for handrails. We will get more details in two weeks from Bill Schilling.
- Rotary Crossroads Park is another project, there has been electrical drops laid to allow for additional power at the pavilion for events at the park such as the Duck Derby.
- Adopt a highway cleanup was coordinated by Hal Hutchinson where we had almost 30 Rotarians participate in that in October.
Club administration chaired by Eric Easton;
- The club directory is completed and passed out to everyone.
- We had the club Paul Harris Dinner where we feasted on the Pheasants shot at the club hunt coordinated by Jim Anderson.
- The Club Motorcycle ride coordinated by Jim Porter, Barry Johnson and Doug McLaughlin, was successful and helped raise money for the international project.
- The Golf Tournament was also very successful and raised over $12,000 for the International project and it was coordinated by Sandy Widmer, and Anthony Martinez.
Youth Services chaired by Susan Griffith,
- RYLA and Young RYLA we had two students at each of these.
- Students of the Month every month from all of the High Schools
- Interact from Roosevelt HS has been very active and they have carved pumpkins, provided dinner certificates from Village Inn for Thanksgiving dinner for families at the Rescue Mission, they participated in the Pizza Ranch fundraiser for Joshua’s Storehouse, they have provided food bags for kids on the weekends and provided Christmas gifts for children and moms at the Rescue Mission.
- Rotaract, we have had their President Amanda Sutton come speak to us and we partner with them in service.
Public Relations chaired by Heidi Foy, which involves press releases, club runner, the rig, website, Facebook etc. Heidi will be taking care of all of these things going forward.
Lori Klatt is our club secretary, Dick Jay treasurer, Jim Ruble is the president elect nominee and speaker chair, Bill DeGraeve is our past president and Liz Becher is our assistant District Governor and a big help to the club.
These are the board members and they are continually working to do what needs done to run the club and to meet the members’ needs, if you have questions or comments please reach out to a board member or attend a board meeting if you like.
Along with all of these avenues of service and all of the things we are doing as a club there is also a thing called the President’s Citation and there RI looks at all of the areas of the club and what the club has accomplished. They look at areas of membership development and retention, Foundation giving, online tool adoption, Humanitarian service, New Generations, and public image. There are goals in each of these areas that we are working towards. If at the end of the year we have accomplished the goals set forth then we will receive the citation. You can go to Rotary.org and get more information on all of these goals so that you can see areas that we need help with.
President Starnes also let us know that Rotary Cares currently has an application for assistance pending and if you would like to help this person on your own there is an e-mail on each table with more information or you can contact Bill Pierce or Don Harris. You can make a donation to the Casper Rotary Foundation and they will make sure it goes to the proper place.
President Starnes thanked us for our hard work and contributions to the club and all that we do.
PP Bill DeGraeve announced that we are looking for someone to chair our 100th anniversary event coming in 2019 and in order to capture the story of our club and the story of our members Tim Monroe has volunteered to gather these stories and put them together. Next week we will have a short questionnaire for each of us to fill out and capture our stories and Tim will process those to put together the club stories.
Deb Theriault reminded us that now is the time to sign up for the Brazil friendship exchange trip, let her know if you need more information.
President John Starnes adjourned the meeting at 1:06 with the ring of the bell, reminding us that next week we are back here at the Parkway Plaza.
“Be a gift to the world”
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