THE GALLIPOLIS ROTARY CLUB

President Lou Ellen Werry welcomed Rotarians and guests to the regular morning meeting of the Gallipolis Rotary club.  Our guests included Emily Davidson of Holzer Clinic Sycamore, guest of Jodie McCalla, and Evans Smalley, daughter of Margaret Evans. Welcome everyone!  Kevin Dennis provided our invocation.

Special Program Next Week—We will be having a special guest next week.  Tara Craaybeek, District Chair for the Rotary Foundation and a member of the Lancaster Rotary Club, will be with us to provide an interesting program on the Foundation.  President Lou recommended we abbreviate our usual format to allow Tara a full half hour to speak. Please plan to attend to welcome our guest speaker!

Rotary Reads—Wednesday, February 2nd, is our next Rotary Reads event for the Gallia Local Schools First Grade Classes.  Project Chair, Emily Dailey, brought in a stack of new books for our schools.  It appears we have readers now scheduled for the balance of the year to support this great project.  Thank you all for your faithful reading!

Valentine Dinner Meeting—In two weeks our club will be celebrating with our Valentine’s, an evening social meeting at the Ariel Theatre at 6 pm.  The menu has been set with a choice of either PRIME RIB or a 2 piece CRUNCHY BAKED CHICKEN as entrees.  Please email Chuck Clark, your reservations if you plan to attend.  We need your input as soon as possible.

Club Board Meeting—Our monthly club board meeting will be held directly after our club meeting today.

Youth Initiative—This THURSDAY, January 27th at 5 pm in HMC’s Conference Room C is the next meeting of our club Youth Initiative Project which is being chaired by Lee Saltzgaber.  Lee explained we hope to be able to develop a plan for a quality needs assessment and focus groups for the community.  This group will meet every 4th Thursday of the month in Conference Room C.

Lee also announced that a friend of his who is a world respected karate master will be in Gallipolis this Spring.  This might make for a great project for Gallipolis Rotary to sponsor for the community.  Past President Bonnie and Chuck Clark are going to work with Lee to plan the event.

Split-Zee-Pot—Jim Morrison worked the club meeting hard today and pushed our small pot up to $7.00.  Our lucky winner today was Paul Koch!  Paul worked hard to draw the right card from the ‘ever diminishing’ deck, but drew the three of club.  SO CLOSE!  The Foundation Fine was assessed against anyone who was NOT in Nelsonville yesterday!

Fellowship—Wearing his Steeler’s cap, Gordon Amsbary led off club fellowship with some historical trivia and announced today is “National Catholic School Day.”  Gordo launched into a couple of catholic jokes and then let everyone know this is ‘National Leadership Week,’ ‘National Creative Frugality Week,’ National Solo Entrepreneurship Week,’ and National Bubble Wrap Week.’  Gordon closed with a few words of wisdom.

Happy Buck$—We had a couple of happy bucks today: Chuck Clark donated a fiver to the club in honor of a new Grandchild, Addison Caite Brumfield, born last Thursday.  Kevin Dennis bought a happy buck for bragging rights for coaching his Grandson in Upward Basketball this past weekend.

Program—Rotarian Dave Smith organized today’s club program to highlight our support for Relay For Life and the upcoming Relay scheduled for June 3rd.  Co-Chair, Shana Booher read a moving poem by Jeanne Davis entitled “I Walk.”  Past President Bonnie McFarland spoke about he impact that cancer has on lives.  Pictures of past Relays were passed around the room.  Bonnie recounted the history of Relay For Life, how it started to heighten awareness, growing from an early women’s ‘Army of Volunteers.’  Today the Relay is a celebration of Cancer Survivors and a remembrance of lost loved ones.  We should not rest until we have found the cure!

Next week’s program features Tara Craaybeek, our Rotary District 6690 Chairperson for the Rotary Foundation.