Today’s Greeter: Peter Imse welcomed members and guests to Bow Rotary.
President Gale Kenison called the meeting to order at 7:44 AM.
Attendance:
41 Bow Rotarians
2 Visiting Rotarians: PDG Tony Gilmore (Capital City Rotary), Tom Morse (Concord Rotary)
1 Guest: Rene Ouellet (Social Worker, Bow High School)
No Guest speaker - Club Assembly
Total of 44
Announcements:
Mike Fortier – Christmas tree sales are booming. Sold 82 trees, 37 regular wreaths and 16 birdseed wreaths in our 1st week of sales. There are still openings, sign up! We hope to sell out soon.
Rene Ouellet works closely with Deb Bourbeau/Bow Welfare Dept. to ensure all Bow families have a good Christmas. They’ve identified a family with two disabled parents needing frequent transportation to medical appointments and very actively involved kids that need to get to school activities. Rene’s asked for our help to replace their van with a decent used van in good shape, by (a) helping find a van; (b) helping ensure it’s road-worthy and can pass inspection; (c) helping fund its purchase.
President Gale – Reminded ‘snowbirds’ that if they’ll be out of town for any length of time, to inform Secretary Eric Anderson in writing so he can present your request to the board to excuse your absences.
Birthdays:
Noreen Christensen – BAD YEAR. Did get a new puppy and jewelry out of the whole situation. In a tough year, Bow Rotary Club has been one of the lights of her life. She’s heading out on a boat to someplace warm for the winter and might take her husband with her.
Sargent at Arms:
Fines: Who knows, they just throw the money on the table if they are late, logo’d up or have no pins. It’s a mystery, notes this month’s bulletin editor.
Happy Bucks:
Peter Imse - $20. He is delighted with new granddaughter Eloise, born right before Thanksgiving and living with her parents Vanessa & Joe in MI. Everything people say about being a grandparent is true, notes Peter. Peter also thanks everyone for help with the elections –there were 30 volunteers, including many Bow Rotarians, and things went swimmingly.
Dave Gazaway – enjoyed having Thanksgiving with just Wendy and their boys, is happy that his older son is 13 and things are still awesome. Also happy that all but one of the slots for bell ringing for the Salvation Army has been filled.
Mark Lavalle loves volunteering – his wife. Had a great time with the grandkids, offered to have them all weekend, forgot he was leaving Saturday morning. So his wife had the grandkids all weekend.
Noreen Christensen and her husband Steve are looking forward to staying in North Conway at the Hampton Inn (complete with water slides) and going on the Polar Express.
Paul Mercier let everyone know that Tom Wilson got a new liver this week.
Gerry Carrier reminded everyone about Midnight Merriment in downtown Concord tonight (12/2/16) from 5 – 11 PM.
Jeannie Richards’ son is an aerospace engineer in NC. While she and her son’s girlfriend’s grandmother were visiting them, Jeannie’s son got down on one knee and proposed to his girlfriend in front of the mother and grandmother. The girlfriend said no way but the gathering was still fun.
Correction, the girlfriend actually said yes. The wedding is on.
Tony Gilmore is happy that Mike Dunn of Duncraft had the idea to donate the wild bird seed wreaths for Tony’s Rotary Club to sell. Started off with 300 the 1st year, this year they’ve sold 2500.
Mike Fortier and his wife had a great time in San Lucia in a trip organized by Linda Bucknam. Their vacation even came complete with a butler!
Peter Imse enjoyed selling trees with Nate Sanel, even though they only sold 4, and now Nate needs arm surgery (or else Peter does).
Tony Gilmore & Chris Parkinson are headed to Bangalore India to do some good Rotary work.
Steve Lauwers is thankful someone subbed for him for the Christmas tree sales, and is happy to announce he has a 4th grandchild, Della Dee, who is living with him.
Bill McGonagle feels that he and his family have so much to be thankful for.
Bob Couch and his wife Rosemary just had a great family gathering in Dayton OH.
Clayton Poole is looking forward to the Capital Jazz Orchestra’s Holiday Pops Concert on December 18. He’ll be conducting, his son will be singing, there are two pieces written just for the show, Laura Knoy will tell a Christmas tale. The fun begins at 4 p.m. at the Capital Center for the Arts.
Sargent Gerry fined Jeannie Richards for taking off her badge and then whining about it.
Sargent Challenge (if applicable):
Hah! No one stopped talking long enough for the sargent to have time to lay down a challenge.
Raffle: No luck. Karen Wadsworth drew the ticket, didn’t get the joker, angrily wrestled President Gale to the ground, Gale put up a good fight, managed to keep the Joker in the deck, safe for another week. Judy Goodnow jumped in to break up the fight and got a black eye. Then Michelle dove feet first into the melee...(Oh wait, that didn’t happen, Karen drew a non-Joker card, got her $20, smiled and graciously returned to her table. My mistake - JG.)
Program:
Rotary member introducing speaker: NA
Program topic: Club Assembly
President Gale noted that the board meeting is coming up.
Secretary’s Report
Secretary Eric Anderson reported that we have 53 club members and 5 honorary members. Attendance in October was 93.4% - members made up 30 missed meetings, only 13 were not made up. September attendance was 94.3%. Eric noted that if you sell trees, let him know; that counts as a make-up. Eric told the club to expect to receive balance due statements. Once each member has paid up, she/he should still have a remaining balance due of $99. If there is more than $99 after we’ve paid, then we need to pay more to get that balance down to $99. All members are responsible to pay their dues and for their breakfast, whether or not they meet the 85 rule.
President Gale reminded us that we have already paid all of the members’ dues to Rotary International, and we are obligated to pay our cook for a certain number of meals, so the club has paid in advance for us and we have to each make good on that obligation.
Treasurer’s Report
Treasurer Paul Mercier reports that the Bow Rotary Club had $12K in the bank at the end of November; there’d be more but we had to write a big check for the trees, the balance will go up once we sell more trees. The Bow Rotary Foundation has about $45K. Looks like we netted about $24K on the auction, similar to last year; he’ll give us a better number on what we have to spend on scholarships shortly.
Club Service Director Dave Scanlon is sure all the committees in his service area are doing great; he hasn’t been able to touch base to give us more details because of his work on the recent election, he’ll catch us up on things next time.
We’ve submitted a grant to India, Director of Vocational Service Sandy Eldrege had a short deadline and got everyone to chip in ASAP - $2K from Concord Rotary, $2K from Bow Rotary, some individual donations from Bow Rotarians, $1K from Londonderry Rotary, $10K from India – altogether she managed to put together $60K toward an educational grant for Mumbai.
Rick Minard is arranging a new member get-together for December, stay tuned on the date and time. He’s reaching out to the community for prospective members, plans to give out free passes for breakfast with the Bow Rotary Club, and telling people they can bring their whole families, so please make them all feel welcome.
New Generations Director Jeannie Richards is working with Peter Imse on an EarlyAct (InterAct for middle schoolers) at Bow Middle School. Advisors will choose up to 30 EarlyAct members by January 4, 2017, with the 1st meeting to be held January 23. Michelle Fortin was quite pleased that the Interact Club manned a table at the Christmas tree lighting event; they will be baking cookies for wounded warriors and other servicemen and women, plan to adopt a family to help them out, and will be caroling at Havenwood Heritage Heights on December 18.
President-Elect Judy Goodnow is working on putting together a map of Bow, to replace the hand-drawn ones currently in use. Tom Ives will make sturdy paper available for the map. There was some discussion about the information being available online/with GPS, but some people prefer hard-copy maps.
Paul Mercier passed the basket to collect funds for Bow Welfare Department to use to make people’s lives brighter; $345 was raised. The basket will be passed around again next week (12/9/16).
Sargent-at-Arms and Auctioneer Extraordinaire Gerry Carrier auctioned off some items remaining from the November 5 auction.
John Ruggles put in the winning bid on a Bow Falcons shirt ($10) and an out-of-town library card ($10). Dean Cascadden’s $20 bid won the hockey lessons in Hooksett. Chris Parkinson’s $20 bid won something he gave to Rene Ouellet. And Ben Kiniry is now, for only $5, the proud owner of an elephant shower head; he hopes to win an elephant at next year’s auction so the shower head won’t go to waste.
Dave Gazaway brought Allied Insurance calendars to give away for free.
President Gale rang the bell to adjourn the meeting at 8:27 AM.
Respectfully Submitted,
Jeannie Gerulskis
