Template_Winter (Dec. 06, 2025)

Meeting Date: December 5th, 2025

Presiding: President Dick Swett

Greeter:

President Dick opened the meeting at 07:30 and shared how inspired he was by seeing the beautiful moonset this am, and gave a blessing.

Attendance:

28	Live
4	Zoom
0	Visiting Rotarians
4	Guests
1	Guest Speakers
00	Total

Visiting Rotarians:

Guests: Interact Students

Announcements:

Christmas Trees- thank you to all who have helped or signed up to help so far. As of Thursday 12/4/2025, 139 trees and 55 wreaths have been sold. There are approximately 69 trees left to sell. Some trees are “lesser quality” (“corner trees or wall trees”) so use your judgement to mark down the price when selling these trees so we can get them sold.
There are still a few more open slots to sell trees so please sign up if you can!
Next Friday 12/12 is the Club Skit
Monday 12/15 is a Board Meeting
Friday 12/19 is Club Assembly
Friday December 26, 2025 and January 2, 2026 there is NO meeting
Salvation Army Bell Ringing will take place Friday 12/19/2025 from 9 am – 7 pm at the Market Basket on Storrs St. in Concord. Bob Couch will send out a SignUp Genius today. Please sign up if you can.
President Emily-Interact Report: The membership of the club doubled this year, so they are able to do more volunteer work. They have done cleanup projects around Bow including at the Elementary School. They have also made Birdseed wreaths and Kits to make wreaths. They brought both wreaths and kits to the meeting today and members are welcome to buy them.

Sergeant at Arms: Dave Farr

Birthdays: none

Fines: Dave reminded us that the scooting fee is $2 and please be polite and apologize to the speaker if/when you leave.

Jerry Kingwill, Logo
Mike Griffin – fine for not doing a spell check on recent his email

Happy Bucks:

Ryan $2- Happy Interact students are at the meeting today and he enjoyed selling trees with Ben and Linda
Vanessa - Learned a lot from her Alaska job deployment where she worked with the native population. Also enjoyed working with Linda Bliss selling trees.
Judy Goodnow $1 Happy Dave Farr came for set up today.
Linda Bliss- enjoyed selling trees with Vanessa
Chris Parkinson –enjoyed spending time with granddaughter
Tamar Roberts – enjoyed selling trees. Also reminding us about Midnight Merriment in Concord tonight – she will be running a warming station at her church – please stop by
Gerry Carrier $1 – Reminder of Midnight Merriment tonight and $1 for granddaughter graduating December 19^th
Dick Swett – happy to have Interact here at the meeting
Tanya Frost –her leadership training program is amazing
Ben Kiniry – bought a house in Newbury, NH as an investment and got several opinions about whether he should fix it up or tear it down and start over. He them heard about an expert in that area from a friend – the expert felt it was a great building and he is going to repair the original building. Happy for the expert advice.
David Farr – happy about the girl’s soccer team championship win

Program: Speaker: Durwood introduced Don Larsen from Dunbarton

Don was originally from San Diego and his career was in marketing. He bought a house in Dunbarton in 1999.

He initially got involved in the Dunbarton Garden Club which he estimates does 90% of the volunteer work in Dunbarton.

He was inspired in 2016 to start a program to put wreaths on military graves in the Dunbarton Cemetery where there are 200 military personnel buried.

He started raising money from corporations and individual town residents and by using a direct mailing asking for donations. Wreaths are put on the graves (using a tripod to sit the wreath on flat gravestones) yearly on Dec 11. Flags are also put up yearly on Veterans Day and the power company helps to put them up.

Dunbarton also has other programs including Old Home Day, a Halloween event, and Arts on the Common which he is involved in. He also has worked on raising money for and the planning of the library restoration project.

Dick Swett asked him about a good way to engage our 2 communities and he suggested going to a Dunbarton Garden Club meeting.

Interact is interested in connecting with Dunbarton to learn about any opportunities to volunteer there.

President Dick closed the meeting with a toast to Rotary the world over.

Respectfully Submitted,
Carol Niegisch

Please excuse any omissions or errors as I was on Zoom this morning and could not hear everything that was said. Thank you.

Carol.