Gallipolitan
President Bonnie McFarland opened her LAST morning meeting of this current Rotary year and welcomed our visiting Rotarians, Lee Salzgaber, and Karen Facemeyer. Jenny Evans was also with us today and is enjoying her summer away from law studies at Marshall. Our invocation was given by Cleeland Willis.
June 29 Meeting—President Bonnie reminded everyone that next week’s meeting will be an evening meeting to be held at the Holzer Medical Center, at 6:00 pm, in the Educational Center. President Bonnie is inviting all members to a time of fellowship from 6:00 – 6:30 pm and is providing wine and cheese and refreshments to all who come. She has promised a fun time for all. Please make every effort to attend and thank Bonnie for a great Rotary year and welcome our leaders for Rotary year 2010-2011!
District Governor’s Visit—President-Elect Lou Ellen Werry announced our new District Governor, Calvin T. Gebhart is scheduled to visit Gallipolis Rotary on July 27th. Calvin is President and CEO of Citizen’s Bank of Pickaway county. He is a member of the Circleville Sunrise Rotary Club. Our President-Elect expressed she is excited about the upcoming Rotary year and that Calvin will make a great Governor for District 6690!
Rotary Mile—Event Chair, Jim Morrison, reminded club members that our next big project is the 63rd Annual Rotary Mile. Jim reminded Rotarians that we will need help at the starting line at 5:30 pm and also at the finish line. President Bonnie offered to provide the cold water and Sergeant of Arms, Kurt Dailey, wanted to confirm that it will be 38.7 degrees cold water! Cold water for a hot day! We will need a handful of Rotarians to help keep the runners together so we can get a group picture.
French 500 Free Medical Clinic—PDG Mel Simon announced that the Free Medical Clinic will be in the July 3rd Parade and will be featuring a trolley. Mel indicated there are seats available and Rotarians are welcome to enjoy the parade from the comfort of the trolley.
Fellowship—Gordon Amsbary ran club fellowship for the meeting
starting with a little bit of Rio Grande trivia and went to on to collect a fine from Margaret Evans for her late arrival. Clyde Evans celebrates a birthday this week and Gordon extracted the ‘mystery singer’ fee from Clyde and Margaret Evans serenaded Clyde with Happy Birthday. Gordon also announced that today is “National Let-It-Go Day”, but did not heed his own advice and collected a birthday fine from Kurt 
Dailey. Kurt also ‘ponied-up’ $5.00 for the mystery singer, however we were now totally out of mystery singers, so Gordon had to provide his own rendition of Happy Birthday for Kurt. Fortunately, this is all conducted in an atmosphere of fun and fellowship and ultimately helps our club treasury. Gordon concluded with some historical trivia about the $2.00 and Paul Koch amazed everyone with his knowledge of the bill!
Split-The-Pot—Jim Morrison ran STP for our meeting today and noted the high large pot of $231.00 increases his ticket business. Our small
pot today totaled $11.00! Our lucky ticket winner today was Lee Salzgaber! Lightning strikes twice in two weeks, as Lee also won last week’s pot! Lee carefully drew for the Queen of Hearts, but narrowly missed by drawing the Jack of Diamonds. So close! The pot is secure for another week. Lee named the Foundation Fine against anyone who was a Wolverine fan! Lee immediately remarked, “Oh, that’s a really bad fine,” as he realized he was the only Wolverine fan in the room today! STP chair, Jim, assured him, “That’s OK, we’ll still accept your dollar anyway.”
Program—Program Chair, Kurt Dailey, introduced our speaker for today, Karen L. Facemeyer, President of the Polymer Alliance Zone of West Virginia. Karen is a native of Mason county and is a member of the Parkersburg Rotary Club. Karen is also a West Virginia State
Senator. Karen spoke to our club about the Polymer Alliance and its mission to promote the high tech, specialty, and plastics manufacturers in the region. She emphasized these companies are responsible for over $2.2 billion in economic activity which means tax revenues and jobs. This is more economic activity that the coal industry in West Virginia and it is growing. Our area needs to provide more trained technical workers for industry and West Virginia sells its economic development with the promise to provide trained workers. Our region is attractive to international companies mainly for its low electric rates and low business costs. Karen concluded her remarks with a Q & A session.
REMEMBER—NEXT WEEK’S MEETING IS AN EVENING MEETING AT THE HOLZER MEDICAL CENTER. Fellowship starts at 6:00 pm and dinner is at 6:30 pm.