Notes from September 18, 2025 - by Mike Saville
President Cara rang the bell and called the membership to order a few minutes past noon and invited Vice President Jon Dearolf to come forward and offer the invocation. Arnold Oliver then led us in the pledge to the flag which we followed by the singing of a classic song, “The Band Played On” written in 1895 by John F. Palmer and Charles B. Ward. Although it’s a classic, I think we were all grateful that Arnold provided the words to the song at each table. After stretching our vocal cords, we all did our normal greeting with each other.
Recognition of September Birthdays was pushed till next week, but Cara made a surprise Birthday cupcake presentation to Judy Koetter. Our exchange student Pauli joined us for this meeting and Cara announced that on Friday, Pauli would be celebrating her 18th birthday. To highlight her special day, the membership all joined in for the singing of “Happy Birthday” to her.
Moving on to Visitors and Guests, Matt Deason introduced his guest Rance Hogue from Arrowhead Roofing and Noros Martin introduced his guests, Gail Natale and his bride, Dee Ann. For the Sunshine report, Cara spotlighted that Glenn Tole was back with us after a short hospital stay.
Josh Phillips then came to the podium for a check presentation to Beacon Lighthouse that was accepted by Judy Koetter.
Then it was time for the Brag Bucket as Noros circled the room collecting the highlights members shared from the past week. And there was an abundant number of brags again this week starting with Benay recognizing Treasurer Alex for registering the Peace Pole that was placed at Rotary Park; Andy highlighted his 11-year-old grandson playing football; and Jeff Spoeri urged the membership to support the concert at MSU that evening and the Mustang’s football team as they take on Eastern New Mexico. Mike recognized that the day was also the 78th Birthday of the United States Air Force and Will Goodner told the membership about Habitat for Humanity opportunities and bragged on his son who scored 3 touchdowns at last week’s football game. I’m sorry if I missed your brag; it wasn’t intentional, but rather my shortcoming.
Tori Smith, from the Boys and Girls Club then introduced Caroline Wynne as our Youth of the Month for September. We learned that Caroline is an 11th grader at Memorial High where she’s in the band, plays soccer and has desires to enter into the field of Small Animal Management. She was accompanied by her parents, Kim and Eric and Ms Stacie O’Donley, the Director from the Southwest Boys and Girls Club.
Noros and Alan Donaldson followed with a Membership Drive Challenge to the entire club membership. Currently our membership is at 70 members and Noros and Alan’s challenge is that they can bring in more new members than the rest of the club. To add some incentive, if the club members bring in more members, Noros and Alan will each donate $250 to the club and if they prevail, the membership will need to come up with the $500. So, the gauntlet’s been laid before us all to beat Noros and Alan starting 1 October.
Josh then introduced our speaker for the day, Steve Garner, to give us an update on the Lake Wichita Revitalization effort. Steve presented a short video about the Lake Revitalization project followed by a slide show to highlight his talking points. He explained that Lake Wichita was completed in 1901 and is the third oldest lake in Texas. Lakes typically have a life span of 100 years, and our lake is 24 years past that now. He went on to explain that several events occurred including an algae event, a lengthy drought and invasive salt and mesquite in the watershed that killed all the fish life and waterfowl. This, plus years of sediment, caused the lake to now have an average depth of 4 ½ feet and just 8 ½ feet at the deepest point.
With the habitat degraded to this point, a complete restoration was determined to be the only way to provide a sustainable solution. That had to start with addressing the salt cedar and mesquite in order to ensure adequate runoff. Once the sediment is removed and the storage capacity increased, the lake will be filled.
He explained due to the efforts of the Kephart family, the wetlands and Holiday Creek are being reclaimed which will “feed” Lake Wichita with water. The Kephart family purchased the land and spent several months removing mesquite trees and an illegal dam that had been the cause of flooding of several of their neighbor’s properties. The mesquite and salt ceders suck hundreds of gallons of water out of the ground every day. The removal will help resupply the lake.
As the restoration stages proceed, the hope is the Lake will once again be a hub of activity. The goal is to increase the average depth of the lake to 9 feet with it being 11 feet at the deepest level. This would support jet skis, boats, fishing, wildlife, and make the lake a recreational facility for residents and tourists. In closing, the work around the Veteran’s Memorial was highlighted and plans described to enlarge this area.
Cara thanked Steve for the presentation and told him that our speaker’s gift of a donation to the Wichita Falls ISD Foundation would be made in his name. We then closed the meeting with the Four-Way Test.