(If you have any comments or questions, please contact the editor)
MILITARY ASCENT ISSUE JUNE 6, 2026
VOL. 6 NO. 31
OUR NEWEST MEMBER-
LORI PINS TONYA
NEWS-NOTES-NONSENSE
Look for your next Eastender News on June 20th.
On Thursday we were joined by local film reviewer Mary Cox. Her reviews have appeared for the last 15 years in the Alton and Edwardsville newspapers. Her passion is writing screenplays. She has sold a couple of them but they have not been filmed. Mary shared some of her process that goes into writing a film review. For her, it may take as many as six hours.
Our club received a nice shout out for our shelter painting project in. the form of a front page photo in the May 23rd Telegraph. Good for us!
Here's where we are regarding our Color Run set for next Saturday @ Belk Park. We are still accepting runners and sponsorships. We will be assembling race packets after our meeting on the 11th. On Friday between 3:30 and 5:30, runners can swing by Prez Mark's office to pick up their packet. At 5:45 on Friday we head to Belk to put up sponsorship signs. Setup begins on Saturday @ 7:30 at our Rotary pavilion. We need water and snack donations. We should be finished by 10. Your assistance is needed!
We welcomed our newest member Tonya Scarborough. She is associated with Heartland Bank & Trust in Alton.
Opening duties were covered by KarenJ, CherylM and MarkA.
Congrats go out to ErinP on her 19 years of club service.
Our Installation Dinner will be held on June 25th in the Belk Park event space. Catering by Food A Fare. Fellowship @ 5:30, dinner and program to follow @ 6.
Birthday wishes go out to KarenJ on the 10th and CarsonC on the 14th.
GlennB recently sent you a Business of the Year voting guide. It's time to cast your ballot!
Early arrivals included-AllenH, Prez Mark and KarenJ.
At our June 18th meeting we will be voting on bylaw changes. We need a quorum of members to be in attendance for a binding vote. Please make every effort to be on hand.
Our golf tournament is on Saturday July 18th @ Belk. The event needs teams and sponsors. Please encourage all your golf buddies/work associates/family members to consider joining us for this fun event. See the flyer below for the details.
Slide-right-inners-GlennB, DaveA, ChrisH and ScottL
Last to arrive included ScottL, SherryT, ChrisH and GeorgeM.
There were 22 members dining on italian beef, mashed taters w/brown gravy, salad and chocolate cake.
Next month we will be moving to the updated ClubRunner platform called Nova. Since each of us use the current platform in different ways, it's hard to say just what changes you may experience. (ClubRunner promises a great experience). So, buckle up and be prepared for some new experiences. See you on the other side...
SAA RickH recruited birthday girl KarenJ as finemeister. Happy Fines were paid by KarenJ, Prez Mark and SherryT who announced her pending nuptials this September, a beach wedding in Gulf Shore Alabama. All are welcome to attend (fire up the bus!). We correctly answered 4 out of 5 Q's that were part of the high school National Personal Finance Challenge.Taking a trip this summer?? pay a $.
The $88 jackpot went unclaimed by MattK and PattiA. RickH won the scratch-off.
And finally...did you know that Rotary had a direct connection with the establishment of RT66? The June Rotary Magazine has the story. Also, if you, or someone you know, is on the hunt for a great RT 66 guide book, the one by Jerry McClanahan is highly recommended-EZ66 Guide for Travelers.
ELECTRONIC SIGN DEDICATION
JOE'S DEDICATION REMARKS
READING THE ROOM
LAST CALL!
LOOKING FOR TEAMS AND SPONSORS
HELP LILLY GETS READY FOR HER ITALIAN ADVENTURE
ALL THINGS TRIVIAL
Harvard College faculty voted to cap the number of A grades given out. What percentage of grades were A's during the 2024-25 school year?
A. 15%
B. 33%
C. 40%
D. 60%
(Find the answer near the end of the newsletter)
Today is National Yo-yo Day
Which state does the Appalachian Trail NOT pass through?
Vermont
Connecticut
Ohio
Maryland
The Appalachian trail runs for roughly 2,190 miles through 14 states in the eastern U.S. Beginning in Maine, it hits New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina, before ending in Georgia. One of the world’s longest hiking trails, it dates back to 1923.
FROM OUR ARCHIVES
Sourced from the Eastender News, Make-Up and Banner newsletters
June 2019
Wood River Mayor CherylM made a state of the city presentation to the EA club. She praised EA Mayor JoeS for his "gift of gab".
Plans were being finalized for the Installation of Officers events at Belk and Julia's.
MarkSp suggested that ChrisH's behavior warranted a 4-Way Test violation.
DaveA paid a Happy Fine.
LindseyH announced that the 2nd annual Color Run turned a profit of just under $7,000. Sponsors included-PaulG, AlanaY, DonnaK and RobinK.
ErinP was recognixed for her 12 years of service.
TommieM made-up @ the EA club meeting.
AllenH intruduced his new pastor RodneyD.
DonnaK fined everyone who did not attend the Color Run.
JohnP covered for Betty Moxey.
Business of the Year nominations were still being accepted.
LoriP was distributing Baseball Mania tix.
MikeK and Frank Akers requested future program speaker suggestions.
PHOTOS OF THE WEEK
DATELINE:ROTARY
A monumental club project
in South Dakota
It would be, quite simply, the largest sculpture in the world: a colossal likeness of Crazy Horse, the Oglala Lakota chief, on a galloping stallion carved into the granite of a mountain in the Black Hills of South Dakota. But in 1949, about a year into the project, sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski ran into a vexing problem. He needed stairs. Lots of them.
“It was a very tedious process, and he just wasn’t moving as fast as he wanted, so he put a request out to the community,” says Marguerite Cullum, a retired staff librarian at the Crazy Horse Memorial, which manages the site.
Answering the call was the nearby Rotary Club of Custer. The members’ task was to help assemble a 700-foot wooden staircase running from the valley floor to the top of Thunderhead Mountain. They formed a human chain, passing each piece of lumber — 29 tons of it — from person to person up the side of the mountain to help construct the 741 steps. “Think how risky that was for them,” says Cullum, a past president of the club and its current secretary. “And they went and did it, and, as far as I know, they were the only ones that showed up. I couldn’t find that any anybody else attended.”
Thus began a long-standing collaboration and friendship between the Custer club and the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation, which would grow beyond the monument to establish a museum and an educational institution, Crazy Horse Memorial University, that offers college credit in several academic programs and prepares Native American students to succeed in higher education.
Whitney Rencountre II is chief executive officer of the memorial today. He is Crow Creek Hunkpati Dakota from the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe. Because the foundation runs solely on donations and accepts no government funding, partners like the Rotary club are critically important. “As a nonprofit organization, we rely on collaborations and those many volunteers through the years to help us advance the work, our mission, and our dream here,” Rencountre says.
The idea for the monument began in the late 1930s with Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear, who watched Mount Rushmore taking shape 10 miles away elsewhere in the Black Hills and wanted to show that his people had great heroes. The man he chose to honor was his cousin, Tasunke Witko, whose name translates to His Horse Is Wild or Crazy Horse, a leader best known for defeating Lieutenant Colonel George Custer and the Army’s 7th Cavalry at the Battle of Little Bighorn.
"Flexibility is the key to stability."-John Wooden
"If you look for perfection, you will never be satisfied."-Leo Tolstoy
"If you don’t like change, you are going to like irrelevance even less."-Eric Shinseki
"Many strokes, though with a little axe, / Hew down and fell the hardest-timber’d oak."-William Shakespeare
SMILE
I had a joke about paper today, but it was tearable.
I made song about tortilla once, now it's more like a wrap.
Some people pick their nose, but I was born with mine.
I found a book called How to Solve 50% of Your Problems, so I bought 2.
I used to be afraid of speed bumps, but I'm trying to get over it.
Corduroy pillows are in style because they're making headlines.
I decided to sell my vacuum cleaner because was just gathering dust.
I was going to tell you a joke about boxing but I forgot the punch line.
I wanted to buy some camo pants but couldn't find any.
I ordered a chicken and an egg from Amazon. I'll let you know.
THE NUMBERS
The ACT said the share of exam takers who got special accommodations rose to 7% last year from 4.1% in 2013. The College Board, which administers the SAT, said about 6.7% of students taking the exam got extra time last year, compared with 2% a decade ago
The Pew Research Center, found that 41% of health and wellness influencers described themselves as some sort of healthcare professional in their profiles, while 31% said they were coaches and 28% said they were entrepreneurs. (Many put themselves in more than one category.) Another 16% reported no credentials in their bios
Sales of nonfiction print titles were down nearly 8% through May 9 this year, and sales of books about politics and current affairs were down 19%-Circana BookScan
Sixty-two percent of men and 54% of women consumed a podcast in the prior month, up from 46% and 39%, respectively, in 2023-Edison Research at SSRS
42% young men say religion is very important to them, up from 28% in 2023, and overtaking young women-Gallup poll
52% of US adults do not know what a 529 education savings plan is-Morning Consult/Edward Jones
(Trivia answer-D)
OBJECT OF ROTARY
The object of Rotary is to encourage and foster the ideal of service as a basis of worthy enterprise and, in particular, to encourage and foster:
First:The development of acquaintance as an opportunity for service.
Second: High ethical standards in business and professions, the recognition of the worthiness of all useful occupations, and the dignifying of each Rotarian's occupation as an opportunity to serve society.
Third: The application of the idea of service in each Rotarian's personal business, and community life.
Fourth: The advancement of international understanding, goodwill, and peace through a world fellowship of business and professional persons united in the ideal of service.
