New President, New Rotary Year!
President Lou Ellen Werry gaveled the first meeting of the new Rotary year to order promptly at 7:15 am at the Doctors’ Dining Room of Holzer Clinic. Our attendance was a little light with only 20 Rotarians in attendance! Members enjoyed an excellent breakfast complete with fresh fruit and other goodies. Cleeland Willis provided our invocation after the Pledge and the 4-Way Test. President Lou Ellen welcomed our only guest, Jim Allen, our program speaker for today.
Rotary Mile—Our annual Rotary Mile was held on Saturday, July 3rd with 20 runners participating this year. We had an excellent turnout of Rotarians to help and attendance credit will be given for those helping. Special thanks really needs to go out to Keith McGuire, and his entire family for their help as well as Jake Nolan, coach at River Valley High School, for making this annual event a great community event. I have placed photos on our club’s Facebook page and here is a link for all the shots”: (Click the slide show!)
Scholarship Thank you—President Lou Ellen read a nice note of thanks from Stephanie Sebastian one of this year’s Rotary Scholars. She is looking forward to reporting to the club on her progress in her education.
ShelterBox—President Lou Ellen announced the club has received an annual report and banner from ShelterBox USA in response to our donation for aid to Haiti. Click on the link above to view the web page for this global Rotary project. It grew from an idea of Rotarian Tom Henderson of Cornwall England to become the largest Rotary project in the World! Awesome!
Livestock Princesses—Jodie McCalla announced the club’s next project will be sponsoring the Gallia County Junior Fair Livestock Princesses. Jodie confirmed the actual event is scheduled for Saturday, July 24th, and she and Denise Shockley will be needing some help. More details to follow.
District Governor’s Visit—Our new District Governor, Calvin Gebhart, will be visiting with our club on July 27th, some three weeks hence. President Werry asked PDG Mel Simon to brief the club on the specifics of our DG’s visit and some of the protocols that we traditionally observe. Please make effort to attend this meeting so we can have a full house for our District Governor.
Split-The-Pot—Dan Whiteley ran STP for our club meeting today, but due to our meager attendance, the small pot was only $4.00. Dan asked PAST PRESIDENT Bonnie to draw the winner and our lucky ticket holder was Shirley Doss! Dan shuffled the deck and Shirley carefully drew for the $235 large pot only to pull the nine of hearts! The deck is getting smaller and smaller and one of these weeks, someone is going to ‘win it all.’ Shirley assessed the Foundation Fine against anyone who did NOT attend the wonderful symphony concert in the city park on Sunday evening. We had an excellent showing of Rotarians at this event.
Fellowship—Gordon Amsbary ran club fellowship for our meeting crooning a Rolling Stones tune. Gordo was briefing the club on the famous birthdays for today when Margaret Evans arrived with dollar fine in hand! Today is ‘National Barn Day’ and, according to Gordon, today is also ‘National Father/Daughter Take A Walk Day.’ Gordon concluded with his famous words of wisdom.
Program—Our program chair for the day was John Ellison 
who introduced our speaker, Jim Allen, who spoke to the club about Prostate Cancer and the new support group, Man To Man. Jim related his personal journey of the past 8 years after his diagnosis of prostate cancer and through the myriad of treatment choices and radiation treatments. As a result Jim has founded the local support group, Man to Man which meets on second Thursdays at the URG Board Room which is located in the URG Cafeteria building. Jim gave out his cell phone number which is the best way to contact him for information about Man to Man. Thank you, Jim and John, for the interesting and informative program on an important topic.
Our speaker next week will be new member, Zac Fosler, who will be giving his vocational talk. Have a great week!