Gallipolitan
President Bonnie McFarland called the regular meeting of the Gallipolis Rotary Club to order at bit after 7:15 am this morning. ADG Matt Willis provided the invocation and Bonnie welcomed our guest speaker for the meeting, Brad Draper, Gifts Officer from Lutheran Social Services of Central Ohio.
Valentine’s Dinner—President Bonnie reminded everyone to mark February 9th as our club’s Valentine’s Dinner. There will be NO MORNING MEETING that day as members will be escorting their Valentine to an evening meeting at Dave’s American Grill starting a 6:00 pm. A sign-up sheet was passed around for members to indicate their attendance and guest. We will have our own private room and will be ordering off the menu. Be sure to sign up next week!
Split-The-Pot—Jim Morrison ran STP for the meeting today and asked our guest speaker to draw the winning ticket for the small pot of $7 and the lucky winner was . . . PDG Mel! Mel donated the funds to the club’s endowment and carefully drew for the big pot pulling the Ace of Spades. The Foundation Fine was assessed against anyone who cannot make the Valentine’s Dinner meeting.
Coin Box—Rotarian John Ellison turned in a mighty heavy Rotary coin box today. Margaret Evans provided John with a brand new EMPTY replacement box and offered club members additional coin boxes. New Members are urged to use the coin box for loose change which can then be turned in as your donation toward the ‘Every Member, Every Year’ $100 donation to the Rotary Foundation.
Fellowship—Rotarian Gordon Amsbary started off club fellowship with 
a ‘She-Bang’ demonstrating that American Idol William Hung may be replaced by a baggy pants, ball cap wearing newbie. ‘Nuff said on that subject! There was a late arrival fine assessed to Cleeland Willis, who said something about being behind a rather slow driver this morning. Gordo indicated that President Bonnie had a picture in the paper recently and she was ready with her dollar saying it was on behalf of our speaker’s program and well worth the fine. Gordon recited a list of celebrity birthdays as well as some history trivia. He concluded fellowship with a few words of wisdom.
Program—President Bonnie introduced our program speaker for our meeting arranged by Rotarian Jim Philippe. Mr. Brad Draper of Lutheran Social Services of Central Ohio presented an interesting program about their mobile food pantry which comes to Gallipolis. 
Lutheran Social Services of Central Ohio is the largest non-profit organization in Central Ohio and focuses primarily on hunger, housing, healing, and hope by operating 5 food pantries, several shelters, a free medical/dental clinic, and pharmacy. A mobile food pantry stops in Gallipolis twice each month at the New Life Lutheran Church and Grace United Methodist Church and has been serving clients since February, 2009. In that time over 2400 family units have been served. Since the downturn in the economy the food pantries have seen a marked increase in needy families seeking services. A Q & A session followed our speaker’s remarks.
President Bonnie presented Brad with a souvenir Gallipolis Rotary Mug for his interesting program to our club.