President Bill DeGraeve called the meeting to order at 12:28 welcoming all Rotarians and guests to Rotary.

 

Jim Allison and Maribeth Plocek were our greeters and Jim introduced guests:

Crystal MacGuire introduced Christen MacGuire;

Chad Nelson introduced Matt Kadlick ;

Susie McMurry introduced Chandra Ortiz from CASA;

Craig Valdez introduced Jon Balanger;

Guy DeWitt introduced Hannah Couldridge and Cait DeWitt and Skyler DeWitt;

Bill Schilling introduced Sydney Schilling and Eric Kobe;

Kevin Murphy introduced Kyle Murphy;

John Griffith introduced Mary Koernig from the NIC;

Paul Anne Doane introduced Darren Divine;

Mike Ward introduced his grandson Dylan Stupak;

Don Harris introduced Colleen Dalton;

Susan Griffith introduced Beau Griffith;

 

Dennis Lower treated us to a good chuckle and then Gary Pehrson had us in singing “The Star Spangled Banner” and we also sang “Rotary”

 

 

President Bill thanked everyone for the work they did and for attending the services for our long time Rotarian and friend Stan Lowe.

Crystal MacGuire gave us an update on Joe MacGuire, he is doing well after his airplane accident three weeks ago and she thanked everyone for their thoughts and prayers.

President Bill welcomed back Rotarian Bob Barnard.

 

John Griffith nominated Susan Griffith for receiving the ADK, International teacher of the year.

Tom Thorson nominated Gary Pehrson for his rousing weekly song and great voice.

Bill Schilling nominated all of those who helped on Saturday with Rotary Park, Troy Mack, Larry Madsen, Liz Becher, Bill Schilling, John Lawson, Steve Loftin, Mike Ward, and Jim Beck.

Tucker LaPrade nominated Hal Hutchinson, his firm was the project management on the new Glenrock Branch Library and they did an awesome job.

Liz Becher nominated Jim Anderson for wearing his Rotary major donor pin in the picture that went with the great article in the Casper Journal.

 

Crystal MacGuire announced that our exchange student Giulia Barbin had a good send off and she thanked everyone who was able to see her off at the airport.

Bill Schilling thanked our Scout, Mike Ward’s grandson, Dylan Stupak for his work on Saturday at Rotary Park, they installed 2 benches and a picnic table as part of Dylan’s Eagle project. Mike Ward also has set up a couple of more scouts for Eagle projects for the park. Bill also let us know that the Wyoming Conservation Corp team has arrived, there are ten of them, they will be doing trail work as well as installing a rope across the creek. They will be with us next Monday for our meeting so we can meet them and thank them for their work.

Anthony Martinez announced that the Golf Tournament is Saturday August 1, there is still time to get your team together. He thanked new sponsors, Jim DeRop for donating a three day two night trip to Vegas for a $5 putting green contest and also Jimmy Goolsby for becoming a hole sponsor. They would like to be a little bigger than last year so get your team together and remember the proceeds go to our International Project.

Brian Deurloo reminded us that the Duck Derby is quickly arriving and encouraged us to sell tickets, he had a show of hands of those who have sold tickets, good start but we need to sell more.

Doug McLaughlin announced the motorcycle ride for August 14-16^th, if you want to ride please contact him ASAP, it will be a fun time. Signup sheets will be available next week.

Dave Simonson gave us a small presentation on the International Project in Panama. Dave, his wife DeAnne, and Gene and Deb Theriault went to Panama in March to meet and work with the Rotary club down there. While there they did a couple of small service projects, they set up some small residential water filtration systems, about 12, and also a few small residential solar systems to run a couple of lights in the homes. The main part of the trip was to scout out the bigger project that we will be participating in which is constructing three additional classrooms for the school so that the children can continue on into grades 10 -12 at the school.  The proceeds from the golf tournament will go towards this project and we have budgeted $4600 from the tournament this year to go towards getting this project started. Additional funds will be found from other clubs and we are looking for more donations and grants to help with the cost. The price for each classroom is $18,400 for materials and the labor will be provided and hopefully some of our club can go help with the construction. Dave then presented a banner to our club from one of the clubs that he visited to do this presentation. 

     

 

President Bill let us know that one of the accomplishments he is most proud of from his year as president is the fact that our club donated more than $30,000 to the Paul Harris Foundation and created 22 Paul Harris Fellows in the process. He called Dick Wimbish forward to explain the Paul Harris Foundation and to help award the pins and certificates.

The following were presented with recognition pins and certificates;

First time fellows: Vickie Diamond, Susan Thomas, Maribeth Plocek, Brad Cundy, Brown Ewing and Bill DeGraeve.

Paul Harris plus one: Richard Schwahn, Kevin Murphy, Dick Wimbish, and Ronna Boril.

Paul Harris plus two: Ned Hodder, Leo Riley, Denise Prugh, Steve Domonkos, Dick Wimbish, and Liz Becher

Paul Harris plus three: Dave True, and Robin Mundell

Paul Harris plus four: Jim Limes, Mike Ward, and Sandy Widmer

Paul Harris plus six: Don Harris

 

Today we had the passing of the gavel from President Bill to New President John Starnes.

President Bill started out with a club update and presentation of awards to a few members who helped him during his year as our president. In the avenues of service, he started with membership, he let us know that our membership is at around 200 members still despite having lost members through moves, resignations and deaths we have managed to keep our membership at that level throughout the year. President Bill reminded us that next week we will have our annual rose ceremony to honor those members that we have lost to death. He reminded us that we support two foundations in Rotary, the Paul Harris Foundation which we just honored those who donated over $30,000 and also our local Casper Rotary Foundation. He thanked and honored Mandy George for all of her work with the local foundation dinner that was held in February that raised over $26,000 to be used to give back to our community in different ways. Next he spoke of our International projects and honored those who take care of that Avenue of Service: Tara Short for her work with the exchange student program, Dave Simonson for taking over the International project with Panama, and Deb Theriault for taking care of our international friendship exchange.

The next Avenue of Service is community service and projects such as our Rotary Park and others, he recognized Jim Anderson for his work on welcoming the Vietnam Veterans home as a community outreach project.  President Bill let us know that he was only able to choose a few people to recognize but that everyone has devoted time and energy and deserve to be recognized, so thank you all for the hard work you put in.

Next he went to fundraising projects, the largest being the Duck Derby which creates money for community projects, he recognized Hal Hutchinson for his work on the Duck Derby the past two years and also Richard Schwahn for his three years of service organizing the ticket sales for the Derby. Our Golf tournament is another of the fundraising projects and those funds are used for the international projects.

He then honored those he refers to as the unsung heroes of the club. He said that without these folks doing what they do on a weekly basis our meetings would not go as smoothly as they do. Lori Klatt, our secretary, Dick Jay our treasurer, Pam Walker for her work lining up greeters, Tom Broumley, Percy Anderson, Tony Valdez, Bill Mortimer, and Dennis Gazdiewich for setting up the meeting every week, Mike McIntosh for typing up the minutes every week so that we have a record of the happenings at our meetings, and Gary Pehrson and Brenda Peters for taking care of our music each week.

The next Avenue of Service is New Generations, he honored Susan Griffith for taking care of our Interact Club at Roosevelt and making sure those students come to our meetings. He also honored Eric Easton and Martha Rakestraw for their work with our Student of the month program and taking care of those students.

President Bill let us know that those who were not here today, he will catch up with them at a later meeting including the Rotarian of the year who was not present today, He also let us know that when Susan Thomas returns she will present the Craig Thomas Leadership Award, which is one of our annual awards.

Bill then left us with some thoughts and comments that he made at meetings throughout the year. He started by reminding us that Liz Becher helped us create our elevator speech about Rotary; “Rotary is like minded leaders coming together to exchange ideas and then taking action” he encouraged us to remember this and to use it to introduce Rotary to prospective members. He then said that we are always in a membership drive so always be looking for people who would be good Rotarians and invite them to a meeting so they can find out what Rotary is all about. His parting thought for us to always remember is “Don’t give until it hurts, give until it feels good” if we will remember this our club will always be able to continue to serve our community. He thanked us for the great year and for allowing him to be our President, he then turned the gavel over to our new President John Starnes and presented John with his new President pin. John then presented a couple of gifts to Bill, first a Rotary watch so that he can keep better track of the time since there was always someone tapping on a glass to let him know it was time to start the meeting. He also presented him with a wine stopper for his wine bottles since he is no longer President and probably will not be drinking as much. He thanked Bill again for his service.

New President John Starnes then thanked us for allowing him this honor of being our President this year and let us know that the new Rotary International theme is “Be a Gift to the World” along with the theme come goals and avenues of service to reach those goals. He then let us know who the chairs are for these areas, Under Membership development and retention, Tara Short, for Foundation Giving, Richard Schwahn; for Online Tool Adoption under Club Administration, Eric Easton; under Humanitarian Service Projects, Brian Deurloo; New Generations, Susan Griffith; Public image and awareness, Heidi Foy. He then let us know the club secretary will remain Lori Klatt and the treasurer Dick Jay. Jim Ruble is now our new President Elect and Speaker Chair. He said that a new Avenue of Service that Hal Hutchinson was going to take care of but in his absence was passed to John Jorgensen, is NASCAR appreciation and awareness, we all had a good chuckle with that one.  Assistant District Governor Liz Becher then presented the banner for this year’s theme to President John in behalf of the District. She also presented John the new theme padfolio as a welcome gift.

       

New President John Starnes adjourned the meeting at 1:30 with the ring of the bell, reminding us that next week we are back at the Parkway Plaza.