President Dick Jay called the meeting to order promptly at 12:24, with the ring of the bell and welcomed everyone to today’s meeting.

Steven Schnell and Becca Steinhoff  were our greeters today and Steven  introduced the members who brought guests:

Gary Pehrson led us in singing “Home on the Range”.

Lisa Scroggins filled in today with history from 1949-1950.

Dennis Lower let us know that a past group study exchange from India, Nemish, contacted him and sent his regards. He also read an email from a father of another exchange student from Istanbul, congratulating our club on our 100^th anniversary.

Steve Loftin informed us that Errol Miller’s son passed away this past week.

President Dick Jay held a moment of silence in honor of the passing of our friend and fellow Rotarian Paulann Doane, whom we lost this past week.

President Dick Jay nominated Mike Stepp for donating Candies and things for our club Basket for the District Conference and putting it all together and wrapping it.

John Griffith nominated Glenn Januska, Joe MacGuire, Kevin Christopherson, and others who were a part of the young eagles at the airport and volunteered their time to give airplane rides to the kids.

Bert Toews nominated Bill DeGraeve for joining the Casper College Board.

Bill DeGraeve nominated Francisco for graduating High School this past weekend.

President Dick Jay announced that last year the board decided to match any donations from the club to the Casper Rotary Foundation up to $7500 and said that the club members donated over $8700 so he presented a check to Larry Madsen a check from our club to the Foundation for $7500.

President Dick Jay also announced that the Club Book of our history is in so please buy your copy for $50 and donate an extra $50 to the Foundation while you are at it.

President Elect John Griffith announced that we have a service project opportunity this Saturday morning putting together a greenhouse for the Wyoming Food For Thought Project.

Lisa Scroggins announced that the new member orientation will be Thursday June 13^th from 5:30 to 7:30 at Racca’s Pizza.

Steve Loftin asked for volunteers for the Food Bank of the Rockies for today but nobody was available so it was moved to next week.

Brian Deurloo invited us all to the Grand Opening for his company, Frog Creek Partners tomorrow from 5-8.

Chastidy Fox announced that this weekend at NicFest we will be selling Duck Derby tickets so if anyone can volunteer to help it would be great.

Anthony Martinez announced that the Golf Tournament is assembling nicely and we have some great sponsors this year. They are still in need of more and also if you do not have a team but would like to golf let him know as there are others in the same situation so they can put you together.

Dave Simonson gave us an update on our international project, and thanked the Golf tournament for raising the funds to help. We just finished the second High School Classroom, they will be painting it next week. Also the next town over just started a new Rotary Club in Boca Del Toro.

They have now Graduated 27 kids from High School since we started this program, 22 more than they have graduated ever before.

Hal Hutchinson announced that the highway cleanup will be Thursday June 13^th at 5:30 out across from the Airport, water and dinner will be provided thanks to Guy DeWitt and Nick Hill (Q’Doba).

President Elect John Griffith announced that we awarded three scholarships for students who wrote essays about the Four Way Test. The winners were, third place Ben Redosivich who gets a check for $250, Second place went to Jordan Bertagnole who gets a check for $500, and the first place winner was our very own exchange student Francisco DeLeuca. Francisco then read us his essay. Congratulations and nice job.

Xeubing Fu gave her classification talk today. Xeubing was born and raised in China but came to the U.S. as a grad student at the age of 22. She is from a small town in Northern China with a population of about a million people, she now knows what a small town is here in Wyoming. She is an only child but has a very large family of cousins, most of whom have stayed in their town. She is a petroleum engineer and that is what brought her to Casper. She has always loved Science and she uses it a lot in her work. She has been in Wyoming for almost four years and really likes it here. She looks forward to getting to know all of us and would love to visit. She thanked her Sponsor Jimmy Goolsby for introducing her to our club.

John Griffith introduced our speaker today, and thanked Kendra Ziler for arranging the speakers. Roger Walters, the Commissioner of the National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association, told us he loves Casper Wyoming and it is always a pleasure to be here. He has been in College Rodeo for many years. Each year the culmination of the Collegiate Rodeo is in Casper because of our community support and how well we as a community welcomes them to our town. He said that they want to stay here in Casper because we have done such a great job promoting and supporting the CNFR here in Casper. All of the students always have the goal of qualifying for Casper. He signed a 10 year contract to stay in Casper and that will be up in 2022 but before he retires in two years he wants to sign a contract for an additional 5 years. They are hauling in a lot of dirt into the Event Center for the Rodeo this coming weekend and next week the 9^th through the 15th. He said they have had different locations and they were not near as good as what Casper has been for the past 21 years. They have developed a great relationship with our community and they appreciate that relationship. This year there will be 381 students which will economically impact our town by 3.5 to 4 million. He said that the students love coming to Casper. He said that College Rodeo is the only collegiate sport that allows the students to also compete professionally while participating in College Rodeo. He then turned the mic over to David Park who told us that Roger speaks very highly of Casper anywhere he goes. He said that the CNFR has a great impact on our community and said that we have gone about 10 years without any arrests of students, which is pretty good for that many college students. The community gives them lots of things to do while they are here even service projects. They donated a couple of tickets for the Tuesday night Rodeo which Kyle Gamroth did a great job of auctioning them off making $250 for the Casper Rotary Foundation from Doug McLaughlin.

 

President Dick Jay concluded the meeting at 1:22 letting us know that next week we will be back at the Ramkota and we will have Sean Levesque, the co-founder and Executive Director of Love2Hope, a national non-profit company dedicated to bringing awareness to the problem of Human Trafficking in America as our guest speaker.

 

“Be the Inspiration”