Gallipolis Rotary Welcomes Elaine Householder
Gallipolis Rotary welcomed Elaine Householder a junior student from THE Ohio State University and our club’s sponsored candidate for a 2011 Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship. President Bonnie McFarland, left, presented our speaker with our club’s Books For Schools certificate for her program today.
President Bonnie opened our meeting and ADG Matt Willis gave the invocation. Bonnie extended a hearty welcome to all members today in stark contrast to the snowy weather which kept many Rotarians from last week’s meeting.
Rotary Scholarships—Jodie McCalla announced that she has created an electronic application for our Rotary Scholarships for college bound high school seniors. The link to the Adobe formatted ‘PDF’ file is listed on our blog page and has been emailed to all area high school counselors. When the file is downloaded the application is automatically formatted to allow the student to type in all necessary information directly from the computer. Good job, Jodie!
4-Way Test Speech Contest—James Wellington announced that the information regarding our 4-Way Speech Contest has been emailed to our local high schools. He is awaiting replies to this announcement to organize a date for the formal judging of our local event.
Literacy Dictionary Project—President Bonnie announced our club has received an invitation from the web site, The Dictionary Project, and they have invited our club to forward pictures and testimonials to be featured on their web pages. This is a great honor for our club! Congratulations to project chair, Debbie Saunders, and everyone who has helped out in this important event over the past few years!
Rotary Relays ‘Dashed’ Again—Event chair, Jeff Lanham, briefed the club on the status of the Rotary Relays. URG’s track facility is booked out this year and with the construction of new schools in the area, many local high schools are holding track meets in competition. Jeff suggested we look into working with GAHS once the Eastman Sports Complex is constructed to hold the Rotary Relays in the future.
PETS—VP and President-Elect Lou Ellen Werry reported she attended the Pre-PETS training this past weekend and is looking forward to attending the actual President Elect Training Seminar in March. She showed off her heavy three ring binder of information covered on Saturday.
Split-The-Pot—Rotarian Jim Morrison ran STP for the meeting today. Our small pot was $6 and the large pot has grown to $103. Jim asked our speaker for the day, Elaine Householder, to draw the winning ticket which was held by Jeff Lanham. Jeff missed out on the ‘big one’ by drawing the nine of diamonds. The Foundation Fine was assessed against anyone who has NOT attended a men’s or women’s basketball game at URG this year.
Fellowship—Gordon Amsbary ran club fellowship for the meeting and welcomed back Cleeland Willis from his recent trip to Australia and New Zealand and fined him for a recent birthday! Cleeland mustered up a few bucks for the ‘Morris Haskins 
Quartet’ composed of Dave Nadler, Margaret Evans, Shawn Siders, and Jodie McCalla. Jeff Lanham stepped in to lead the singing of Happy Birthday to Cleeland!
Under Happy Buck$, Melissa Kimmel offered a buck to plug a Basket Bingo offering for Serenity House and Jeff Lanham bought a buck to say how great it was to be back in Rotary! Margaret Evans and President Bonnie both were fined for recent pictures in the paper. Congratulations to Giesela and Resty Alonzo who recently celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary!
Program—Chuck Clark introduced our speaker for the meeting, Elaine Householder, who is a junior at OSU and a candidate for a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship. Elaine spoke to the club about her interest in conflict resolution and her recent trip to South Africa. Elaine is an exceptional student and comes highly recommended by her professors. She volunteers on weekends with Franklin County Children’s Services and tutors in the Columbus Public Schools. She is developing a conflict resolution seminar involving a group of students from the Columbus Public Schools and Upper Arlington Schools to bridge the divisions of culture and race. She plans to attend the University of Ulster in Ireland to further her studies in conflict resolution.
After the meeting, Elaine met with President Bonnie and a number of club board members who formally interviewed our speaker. Everyone who has met with Elaine has been highly impressed with her candidacy and we highly recommend her for consideration for this Ambassadorial Scholarship. Thank you for attending Gallipolis Rotary and we look forward to assisting you with the scholarship process.