The speaker at our last meeting was Attorney Susan Satterwhite. She reminded us of items that we need to have on hand before we die. She also gave us a few tips on things to include in our will and she encouraged us not to do a will on-line. This was a very informative talk and enforced things that we should all know, but sometimes tend to forget. Thanks Susan for your talk!

Our speaker this week will be Margie Verhagen from the Rockwall County Committee on Aging. She will be speaking on senior services and giving us an update on the Meals on Wheels program. This should be an interesting program—see you then!

A donation of $1,000.00 was made to Project Hand Up as our International Project this year. 

Darren Collins gave both the Early Bird Club and our Evening Satellite Club wonderful presentations about his educational work. 

Our speaker last week was Robbie Stewart, PR Director of Royse City Health & Rehabilitation. She gave us the top 10 reasons we should choose RC Health Rehab. They have a wide range of services; additional services; accept all insurances; support the community; and the number 1 reason is that they are a hometown facility. This was very interesting, thanks Robbie!

This week our program will be Speaker will be Dallas Police Senior Corporal J D Byas from Dallas SWAT as seen on the A&E Network .  Don’t miss this one!

We welcomed Teacher of the Month Carmen Slagel, art teacher from Fort Elementary and her principal Danette Dodson.

On February 28, 2013, our program was brought by Vicki White, Tom Shelton’s sister, who spent an interesting week on board the Carnival Triumph. It was nice to find out the truth about the adventure had by the people on the ship. So much of what we have heard is blown way out of proportion-it was nice to hear the truth from someone who experienced it firsthand.

Our program on February 21, 2013, was brought by Misti Potter of the Boys & Girls Club of Rockwall County. Plans are being made for the opening of the Royse City Boys & Girls Club as early as this summer. Activities for the summer are planned and as soon as school starts there should be a full program ready to be started. March 23 is the first fund raising event for this club. It will be held at Ruth Cherry Intermediate school and will be a dinner and auction. Jim Mellody is chair of the advisory committee and if you need any further information, contact him. This will be a wonderful addition to our community!

December 7, 2012—Interact, RCHS, Room B123

December 8, 2012—Holiday Market—11:00-??

Annual Royse City Christmas Parade    6:00 p.m.

December 13, 2012—Christmas Party at Boles Home 7:00 p.m.

December 14, 2012—Interact, RCHS, Room B123

December 15, 2012—TriCounty Choral Society presents “Christmas    Unwrapped” at RCHS auditorium 7:00 p.m. (See Mary Ellis or Annie Cornelius for tickets)

August 11, 2012—Hot Rocks Bike Ride—Rockwall Rotary—we will man a water station again this year.

August 11, 2012—District Roundtable, Plano Chamber of Commerce—9:30

August 18, 2012—Membership Seminar

August 25, 2012—End Polio Day at the Ranger Game—tickets are $10 for the game-Rangers vs Twins. There will be a tailgate party starting at 12:30 with food for purchase of $5. You will be able to take this “Rotary food” into the game. Tickets need to be purchased this week at the meeting.

Rockwall Rotary’s annual Hot Rocks Bike Race is scheduled for this Saturday, August 11. Several of us that have worked this event in the past are tied up at another district function that morning. We need people to step up and help with the water station that has been assigned to us. If you cannot work the entire time, please consider working a couple of hours. This is a wonderful way to make friends with our Rockwall Rotary and it is a lot of fun!!

Thanks to all those who brought toothpaste and especially to those who gave up part of their Friday and Saturday to help with the Shoes for Kids event in Rockwall. This is a wonderful time to make sure that children of Rockwall County have new socks, new shoes, and toothpaste before school starts in a couple of weeks.

Last week we had the privilege of having two outstanding speakers. Rick Ostroski from First Methodist Church told us about the food pantry, Our Daily Bread, and how the demand for assistance is a growing concern in Rockwall County. Anyone that would like to continue making a contribution can still do so. Just bring your canned goods to our meeting and they will be delivered to the church. We also had the chance of hearing one of our former RYLA students, Ryon Phillips. Ryon has returned from a mission trip to Cambodia where he met with the children of Cambodia. He told a heart-wrenching story of a little boy in need of a wheelchair. Before the meeting was over, Ryon had a wheelchair thanks to Tom and Ginny Ryan and $120 to help get the chair to Cambodia. What a wonderful Rotarian meeting!!

This week‘s speaker will be Interact sponsor, Renee Wallace. Renee has worked very hard with our club to make our Interact club one of the best in District 5810. She is one of the art teachers at the high school and a very integral part of our Rotary Club. We awarded her a Paul Harris Fellow at our Installation Banquet for all the dedication she has shown to our kids. Please welcome Renee Wallace to our meeting this week. 

This week we heard many facts about bullying and how it affects our children both in school and at home. We want to thank Kathy Morgan again for bringing us this timely program.

Adoption Awareness Carnival

A great group of Rotarians came together after braving all sorts of traffic problems for a wonderful carnival for some very deserving children. It is always a heart-warming experience to serve these children and watch as perspective parents follow the children they would like to adopt. As of Monday, 4 children have definitely found parents, 15 others have been selected by 25 families who must go through additional studies. Thanks to all who made this happen!

This week we   had  the opportunity to hear Gregg Strahm, Boys’ Athletic Director and Head Coach. We got an update on our Mighty Bulldog team for this year—what and who  to look for in the coming year. Gregg is a great motivator, a super head coach, a fantastic dad, and an overall good guy. We welcome Gregg  at  our  meeting this  week!  GO DOGS!!!

Instead of a regular meeting , our club enjoyed   a social at the President’s home. About 30 of us enjoyed a wonderful meal and   lots of fellowship. If you were unable to come, you missed a super night—plan  on attending the next time!

This week Bill Shipp provided the latest infomation about the impact the new intersection at Interstate 30 will have on businesses nearby.  He also gave us some up to date information about the Wal Mart that will be located at the new intersection.  It was a very informative session, and we really appreciate all that Bill Shipp and Larry Lott have done to bring this progress to Royse City.

We were very privileged to have 3 of our RYLA students  with us this week. They gave a glimpse into the goings-on at Camp RYLA with all  the fun activities. We also got to see how inspirational this camp can be to our young people. We want to thank Marissa, J.R., and Clayton once again for bringing our fantastic program. We will  be seeing these kids again, I am sure.

Operation Veteran Support

Crystal Coday , kindergarten teacher at Fort Elementary School, with Lucille Bell.

Our speaker this week will be from the Royse City Education Foundation.  They will be telling us the great things the Foundation does for the students and teachers of Royse City ISD. We look forward to hearing from the Foundation—Welcome!

Satellite Club has moved their meetings to the Senior Citizen Center. The speaker this week will be District Attorney Kenda Culpepper. She will give an excellent talk about her duties as district attorney and the types of cases she sees here in Rockwall County. Make Kenda feel welcome!

Our speaker this week will be our own Larry Lott director of the Community Development Corporation. Larry will update us on the activities of the CDC and what we have to look forward in the near (& far) future. Can’t wait to hear from Larry!

Mary Johnson was the speaker for the Satellite Evening club this week.  

Our Satellite Club got off to a great start with 10 people attending. We saw several returning members and several new faces. Let’s keep this club growing and active!

Our speaker last week Darren Collins, knife juggler, puppeteer, TV star (Good Morning Kenya) and educator. What a wonderful job this young man is doing educating children about Aids & HIV. He has developed a curriculum for children that teaches them about clean water and the true ways that Aids is passed from one person to another. This was a most entertaining and educational program, sorry if you missed it!

The Royse City Rotary Club gave a $3,800 grant to the Friends of the Royse City Library to purchase computers for the C. F. Goodwin Library.

Last week we had our District Governor, Ean Sullivan, as our speaker and installer for the new board. Ean has had a very interesting background in Rotary that he shared with us at the banquet. We had excellent food, thanks to Ana, great time of fellowship, and a glimpse into the coming year from our new president, Michelle. Thanks to all for the work you did to make this a great evening—we look forward to this year and what it has in store for the club!

There is no morning meeting this week. We will be having a board meeting with the new District Governor, Ean Sullivan, at 530 at Texas Leadership Bank. That board meeting will be followed by our Installation Banquet at 7:00 at the Holiday Inn Express. If you have not paid for the banquet, a price of $25/person will be collected then. Please join us to welcome the District Governor and install our officers for the new Rotary year. See you Thursday evening!

We had a great social meeting at Arboledas on March 7, 2013.  

At our last meeting we heard Cheryl Weaver of Women in Need, Rockwall. She told us that there are currently 70-100 women who come to the Women in Need in Rockwall. Most of these ladies’ spouses don’t want them to work so they are isolated from the rest of the community. A woman will leave 7 to 8 times before she is successful. Rockwall is an outreach office and the shelter that we have helped in the past is in Greenville. Thank you for a very enlightening program.

February 9—Hosting Grant Writing workshop—Plano Chamber

February 9—Walk and Talk—Promote the Flag Program

February 15 & 19—Flag Days

February 28—Chili Fest—Greenville Rotary—Post Office on Lee St  11-7

March 7—No Morning Meeting—Social at Arboleda’s

March 16—District Gala

Last week we heard from head coach and athletic director, Greg Strahm.  Royse City is in a new district again this year, and Greg brought us up-to-date with the challenges ahead for the players. He explained that we have some new, young coaches that are inspiring our young men to do their absolute best. The slogan for this year’s team is “Fight, Faith, Finish”—that says a lot, doesn’t it? Go Bulldogs!!

August 4, 2012—Shoes for Kids—First Methodist Church, Rockwall

August 8, 2012—Board Meeting—Texas Leadership Bank—7:00

August 11, 2012—Hot Rocks Bike Ride—Rockwall Rotary—we will man a water station again this year.

August 11, 2012—District Roundtable, Plano Chamber of Commerce—9:30

August 18, 2012—Membership Seminar

August 25, 2012—End Polio Day at the Ranger Game—tickets are $10 for the game-Rangers vs Twins. There will be a tailgate party starting at 12:30 with food for purchase of $5. You will be able to take this “Rotary food” into the game. Tickets need to be purchased by August 12.

Rockwall Rotary’s annual Hot Rocks Bike Race is scheduled for Saturday, August 11. Several of us that have worked this event in the past are tied up at another district function that morning. We need people to step up and help with the water station that has been assigned to us. If you cannot work the entire time, please consider working a couple of hours. This is a wonderful way to make friends with our Rockwall Rotary and it is a lot of fun!!

Calling all Rotarians!!! Our club has committed to providing 1,500 tubes of toothpaste to the Shoes for Kids program in Rockwall this Saturday, August 4. If you have not contributed by bringing toothpaste to the meeting, be sure that you buy the toothpaste and bring it to this meeting! We will need volunteers to load the toothpaste and get it to the church on Friday and then to hand out the toothpaste on Saturday, so be sure and sign up this week to work on those days.

Our program next week will be brought by our Interact sponsor, Renee Wallace. Renee was the recipient of a Paul Harris Fellow at our Installation Banquet. She has been instrumental in growing our Interact Club and helping all the students at the high school in many different ways. Renee and her family have an open and giving love of the students here. We want to welcome her to our meeting!

Last week our speaker was District Governor Sandy Forster. She gave us all a pep talk on Rotary and what we can achieve in our club. Sandy has many plans for this year, and we certainly don’t want to miss out on them. After the meeting, we had a very productive board meeting with Sandy. Many ideas, concerns, hopes, and dreams were brought out. We will have an outstanding year, with David’s leadership and Sandy’s and AG Bill Rolston’s help. Hang on—it will be fun!!

Our program this week was brought by Brittany Rogers, daughter of Kari Hollifield. Brittany told us about a mission trip to Nicaragua. She is a graduate of Royse City High School and past president of the Interact Club.  We are so proud of her achievements.

This week we heard from Kevin Wallace. He had some interesting information about the architecture of Cowboy Stadium and how architecture has affected us in the past and present. It was a very interesting program and for those that have not been to Cowboy Stadium, very informative.

What a wonderful meeting we had this week! We had a full house and a full program with the three judges of Rockwall County. (That sounds like the title of a book) Our Interact Club had 6 members and their sponsor, Renee Wallace, present for their World Week Celebration—it is always a treat to have our Interact Club with us. The judges were very informative and pretty funny too, and told a lot of things that some of us that live in Rockwall probably didn’t know. We were invited to attend the dedication of their new courtrooms on November 11 starting at 4:00. We should try to attend and give them the support they showed for our club.

This week, we had Jimmy Butler, Chief Financial Officer for the Royse City School District, bring our program about school finance and financial changes we can expect in our school system. He explained how extensive planning from administration and the school board has made our district considerably sounder than many districts in our state. He was assisted by Jeff Webb and in spirit by Randy Hancock.

Kenda Culpepper, District Attorney for Rockwall County, brought us a very informative presentation on the firearms that are legal and illegal. It was really an eye-opener for a lot of us. She really told us all we needed to know about the legal aspects of weapons and their possession.

Tom Harmon, Wheelchair Chairman for District 5810, told us about his upcoming trip to Mazatlan, Mexico. He will be distributing wheelchairs to those in need. This is a very worthwhile program that some members of our club have participated in.

We really had a crowd at the club last week! If you weren’t there—you missed it. The Royse City Education Foundation brought the program with several members of the Board of Directors present to help give input and answer questions.

 Jo Nell Mellody, Christi Schell, Oralia Lopez, and Sheila Whitney

We also heard from Phillip Paul and Jeff Webb about their experiences at RILI.

We announced the Teacher of the Month from Royse City Middle School.

 Teacher of the month—Kristen  Loyd, from the Middle School, with her Principal, Jere Craighead.

Even though we had technical difficulties and were not able to see the pictures of how Blue Bell looked in the early days, we still were able to have a great program. It was interesting to hear the differences in how ice creams are made, packaged, and distributed. We even got to eat ice cream for dessert for breakfast!! We also want to thank Mike Niebuhr for providing ice cream for the Adoption Awareness Carnival—thanks again Mike!

Teacher of the Month, Brooke McMaster, with Principal Dodd and Nancy Starnes

This week we had a very informative program brought by Mark Mersman who gave us a lot of facts and information on the amount of natural gas that is in our own country and the technology that is being used to make it useful. He told us that we have enough reserves here that we can maintain sufficient production for a number of years.

Jeff Crilley, public relations director for District 5810, gave us an eye-opening program on Facebook and the use of other personal media. We were all encouraged to be a “friend” of District 5810 on Facebook and to “like” posts that the district and other clubs put on the newsfeed. We also announced that Royse City Rotary would have our own Facebook page. How many of you have gone to Facebook and helped our cause?

This week Gordon Sidler with the Tawakoni Council of the   Boy Scouts was our speaker. He told us about the ways the scouting program has  grown and about the ways boys grow through the program. He praised this area on  the number of Eagle Scouts that completed their program this year.

Thanks to all those who braved the RAIN to help with the Rockwall Hot Rocks Bike Race. While the   numbers of riders was down somewhat the enthusiasm was still there from those   who suffered through the elements. Our rest stop was well-manned and eager to   help those that stopped momentarily.

We had an interesting program this week from our District  Governor Bud McBrayer. He reminded us of the fun ways we can be involved in   Rotary. Governor Bud’s main goal this year is to increase membership and he  gave the club different ways to bring new members into our club. It is always a   privilege to have the District Governor, his wife, the Governor’s Aide, and our  Assistant Governor with us!

Thanks to all those we helped with the Shoes for Kids   program on August 6. We had 11 able bodies setting up tables, shoes, and           toothpaste. Saturday was a special day when the children and their parents came   for shoes. You could see the appreciation on their faces when they were  carrying their new shoes, socks, toothpaste, and toothbrushes. A great big   thank you to all those who helped and brought toothpaste.

Last week we had our first Club Assembly of the year and we heard from each area of service. David Gardner encouraged us to find out when and where other clubs meet so that meeting could be used for a make-up. Ginny Ryan told us that we need to increase our membership this year and especially focus on bringing in younger members. Mary Johnson is trying to increase our media coverage in the PR area. Ted Bedsole’s area of service has many different programs including: flags, international projects, youth programs, and blood drives. David Magness, chair of  our RI Foundation will be having a program concerning Foundation goals soon. All these areas all are in need of your help—there is a place for you. If you have a passion for a particular area, please see one of these people so they can help you get started.

Our speaker last week was Joe DeLane, coordinator for the Rockwall County Emergency Management.  We learned that the biggest threats in our area are severe weather and hazardous material incidents.  He stressed the importance of having personal preparedness programs, and had available information to help us to do that.  Because of the programs in place, Rockwall County has been named a "Severe Weather Ready Community".  Thanks to Joe for a very informative program!

Our Teacher of the Month for March is Dawn Jordan, a teacher at Ruth Cherry Intermediate School. 

Our speaker last week was our very own Bill Shipp , who is the city manager for the City of Royse City.  He gave an overview of what is happening in our little corner of the world, and briefed us on the projects that the City is undertaking.  He noted that the population of our fair city has increased from 2,959 in 2000, to 9,349 in 2010.  We have grown!  With growth comes challenges and we are working to meet them.  Thanks, Bill, for the great information!

Royse City had seven members that attended the District Assembly on Saturday, February 26, at the Collin Higher Education Center in McKinney.  If you did not attend, you missed a very informative and educational event.

Our speaker this week was Patricia Batsell from Lakepointe Medical Center.  She is a registered nurse and is director of ICU and the Cardiovascular and Stroke Center Program.  She stressed the importance of getting medical care as soon as possible in the event of a stroke because there is a very small window of time to treat stroke victims.  Since stroke is the third leading cause of death and is the largest cause of disability in the US, this was extremely important information.  Thanks to Mrs. Batsell for the great program.