Rotary Hears From French Art Colony
President Bonnie McFarland opened the regular meeting of the Gallipolis Rotary Club promptly at 7:15 am and Kurt Dailey provided the invocation. Bonnie welcomed our guests today—visiting Rotarian Bill Knight from Pt. Pleasant Rotary, and Joe Wright, from the French Art Colony.
District Assembly—Bonnie announced our club will be well represented at this Saturday’s District Assembly in Circleville. Attending will be President Bonnie, President-Elect Lou Ellen Werry, Treasurer Shawn Siders, Secretary Chuck Clark, Resty Alonzo, and PDG Mel Simon. This is the largest group representing our club attending a district function in recent years!
District Conference—President Bonnie encouraged members to plan to attend at least one of the days of the upcoming District Conference to be held in Athens May 13-16. District Governor Ram Gawande. The golf tournament is scheduled for Thursday and Gallipolitan golfers have always excelled! Registration is only $25 until April 30th. DG Ram is offering a challenge to the clubs of $500 for the club with the best per capita attendance. We can win this!
Spaghetti Dinner for Polio Plus—Shirley Doss announced our club’s Polio Plus fund-raiser will be held on April 27th at the Senior Resource Center. Alvera Robinson will be cooking up the special sauce and our promotions will center around her great spaghetti sauce. The actual sauce preparation will take place on Sunday, April 25th and we will need a few Rotarians to help with the stirring. The 27th will be a EVENING MEETING! We will be distributing 5 tickets @ $5.00 each to members to promote attendance and raise funds for Polio Plus.
Scholarships—Jodie McCalla updated the club on this year’s Rotary Scholarships. This Friday, April 16th, is the deadline for applications and the selection process will go into full swing starting next Tuesday. The scholarship committee will meet after next week’s meeting to preview the applications and discuss the process of selecting this year’s winners. Jodie emphasized our scholars will receive their award in two installments over two years and will be required to attend our meetings to give an update of their progress. There will be follow-up on these awards and the recipients will be briefed on these new requirements. Our goal is to have regular updates from our scholars and not to lose contact with them as they continue their education. Thank you, Jodie, for all your hard work!
Relay For Life Auction—Dan Whiteley announced our club has raised over $400 from the weekly auctions that benefit our club’s Relay For Life funding. Committee Co-Chair Kevin Petrie offered the promotion of RFL Luminaries @ $10.00 in our club to raise additional funds for our team. President Bonnie mentioned how moving the luminary ceremony is for this event. Dan urged our club to show up en mass for the Parade of Teams on Friday evening to show our support. This is one of the biggest community events during the year and will really get Gallipolis Rotary noticed!
Fellowship—Fellowship Chair, Gordon Amsbary, ran club fellowship for the meeting. Gordon ran down a list of famous 
birthdays on this day in history and among them included club member, Paul Koch! For a small donation of $2.00, Paul organized an impromptu quartet of ‘Gordon and the Red Badgers’ consisting of Gordon with Sharon Shull, Shana Booher, and our newest member, Zac Fosler. They did a great job of singing Happy Birthday and impressing club members of their talent! Margaret Evans and Paul Koch bought ‘Happy Buck$’ today. Gordo concluded with a few words of wisdom.
Split-The-Pot—Jim Morrison ran STP today and announced the small pot had climbed to $10.00. Jim took a moment to remind members the purpose of our weekly STP effort—our club’s local endowment. One-third of ticket sales goes to the weekly winner, one-third increases the large pot, and the final third is contributed to our club’s endowment. The club endowment is our ‘rainy day’ fund which funds our club’s scholarships in case of poor weather experienced during the Bob Evans Festival which is our major fund raising event.
Our lucky ticket holder today was ADG Matt Willis. Matt carefully drew from the ‘ever diminishing deck’ but came up short drawing the Ace of Spades. Jim assessed today’s endowment fine against anyone NOT registered for the District Conference.
Program—Today’s program chair was Dan Whiteley who introduced Joseph Wright, Executive Director for the French Art Colony in Gallipolis. Joe recently became the new director for the FAC and brings his energy 
and a wealth of experience in theatre and the arts to this community gem. Joe has been working with the local group’s board organizing the year’s activities and a full list of summer adventure camps for school age children.
A newly organized community theatre group, Riverby Theatre Guild will be presenting six productions during the year including Alice In Wonderland, June 4-7, at the Wedge Auditorium at the Point Pleasant High School. William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream will be presented July 16, 17, and 31 outdoors in the Thaler Gardens of the FAC. All tickets are $5.00. The center continues to host local exhibitions and currently has a great show Florence Lovett, a native of Greenup, KY.
President Bonnie presented Joe with a Books For Schools certificate for his program today. A book in Joe’s name will be provided to a local elementary school as a part of our literacy project for being our speaker today.
Next week’s program will be arranged by Cleeland Willis. April 27th is a evening meeting to benefit Polio Plus at the Senior Resource Center.