Libertyville Sunrise Rotary Bulletin December 20, 2023

 

Written by Patrick Hart

 

President Babjak led the meeting this week and we opened with a prayer, a pledge, but no song.

 

 

Doug Fendon bragged that his daughter and his grandson came to visit.

 

Elliott Pinsel announced that his son has become engaged, and the father-in-law to be approves of the young man’s choice.

 

Scott Hezner bragged that Jeff Harger had done a great job of distributing 48 Christmas dinners to families in need.

 

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Today as we do every year at this time, we recognized and thanked the people at Lambs farm who serve our breakfast each week Elaine, Michelle, Evelyn, and Tony.

 

Next week in lieu of a morning meeting we will have a Wednesday evening gathering at Mickey Finns.  We have also scheduled evening meetings once a month through May next year.

 

There will be no meeting on January 3, so our next morning meeting will be on January 10. 2024.  Where has all the time flown?

 

We are in need for members to step up to be bulletin editor and chairperson of Bingo.  John McDonald has just accepted the position of chairman of highway cleanup, and he has promised to produce two of these events next year, which under John’s leadership I am sure will be more fun than ever.

 

The food pantry with our help supplied 48 Christmas dinner baskets this year.

 

Elliott Pinsel said we received a thank you card for our donation to BraveHearts.

 

Howard Jaffe conducted a contest this week to see how many quotes we could match to popular Christmas movies.  With eighteen questions the top score in our club was 12 and the cellar score was 2.  I will not mention any names.

 

 

 

PROGRAM:  This week we did not have an outside speaker, but our president, Richard Babjak, reported on his progress in reaching his goals as of the midway point of his term.

 

Richard pointed out that one of the big changes this year is that the club eliminated its second fund raiser.  He is hoping that sponsorships from the winter fund raiser will make up for lost revenues, and there are promising signs that this is going to work.

 

The club has not done as well in the membership area this year, and it needs to bring in more members.

 

We have had a very successful year in community service, with Patricia Bleck having taken over leadership in this area and having initiated a number of new community service projects. 

 

The club has also changed slightly the format for what we used to call classification talks by Rotarians at some of our meetings.  In its place we have initiated a featured Rotarian talk at our nightly meetings.

 

This week we unanimously elected the following officers to lead our club during the July 2023 to June 2024 year:

 

President:                                Jon Robb

President Elect:                       Tom Gore

Club Treasurer:                       Tom Miller

Club Secretary:                       Bob Zamor

 

Directors:

Club Service:                          John McDonald

Community Service:               Patricia Bleck

International Service:             Rich Schoeneman

New Generations:                   Bill Taranowski

Public Image:                          Robin O’Connor

Vocational Service:                Scott Hezner

 

Howard Jaffe reports that we have a title sponsor for the event, the City of Hope, and that our website is live, although we still have some bugs in it.

 

Our weekly prize came to $27.00 this time, with $54.00 in the big pot with only 51 cards left.  Steve Risley won the little money, while Rich Babjak failed to draw the Ace of Spades for the jackpot.

 

 

“There is no greater calling than to serve your fellow man.  There is no greater contribution than to help the weak.  There is no greater satisfaction than to have done it well.”    Walter Reuther

This will be my last bulletin, since I will be leaving the Libertyville Sunrise Rotary Club, and I  wanted to say how much I have enjoyed chronicling the happenings at our meetings for the last fourteen years.  It has always been exciting.

 

Pat Hart