July 14, 2011 Rotary Meeting

July 14, 2011 Rotary Meeting

By: Chip Griffin

Mike Thompson, innkeeper, led the way for the usual pre-Rotary gathering and ably assisted by fourth grader, Sarah Miller, who arrived from Missouri and is visiting her grandparents, Skip and Sue Kreahling. President Jim Stormont opened our meeting, followed by a prayer from Skip Kreahling, and our hearty meals served by Tom Churchill, Doug Roberts, and Bob Goodrich.

We welcomed our guests: regular visiting Rotarian Michele Maclaren from New York, the very tall Joe Krueg from Pennsylvania, and future Rotarian, Sarah Miller.

Posters were available for pickup and handouts for the upcoming football game. Dwight Swisher, Rotary Auction chair, thanked Jen Page for her fabulous publicity. Vic thanked the area merchants for contributing so well to our silent auction portion of our Auction on August 6, and he noted examples of silent auction contributions such as tickets for the Opera House and Railway Village, one ton of fill, half cord of wood, and 12 yards of loam; assisting Vic in the silent auction are Bill Bailey, Stephanie Blecharczyk, Deb and Daren Graves, and Bob Goodrich. The bag lady pled for old bags at our flea market on August 6. Frank passed around the barrel for more contributions to The Rotary Foundation, which lifts up people all over our world. Doug Roberts asked for carpenters to fix the trim around the Scout Hall door, and immediately Bill Bailey, Vic Taylor, and Skip Kreahling volunteered to fix it in August. Members will continue to remind the scouts to clean up the Scout Hall grounds this month.

Sue Kreahling and Judy deGraw garnered the raffle winnings. Bob Jacobson, sergeant at arms, collected dollars from Annette Stormont, who thanked outgoing membership chair Dwight Swisher for his work and for shifting the burden to her for this coming year. Marty praised the thin Jim Singer and the not so thin Vic Taylor for being Assistant Governor and for beginning to organize her District Conference for 2013; Marty also gave a thankful dollar for her opportunity to reconnect with their Safe Passage sponsor child when she treks again to Guatemala for the Guatemala Literacy Project next week.

President Jim presented Paul Harris Awards to Craig Tukey and Michael Pollard. Each award represents $1,000 contributed to The Rotary Foundation.

Jim Stormont presented his “State of the Club” for his year as president from July 1, 2011 to June 30, 2012. He first outlined his broad goals: (1) grow membership, as any club or corporation must either grow or shrink and as we should share Rotary with our friends and neighbors; (2) support our local community; Jim noted that he has lived in many communities around the U.S. but he has never known a community like our Boothbay region, where we help each other so much, such as Rotary contributing to so many people who need it the most like our fuel fund, food pantry, and scholarship students; (3) develop new fundraising possibilities to fill in the gaps for lower fundraisers or increased needs; (4) share the workload amongst all Rotarians; for example, it takes at least eight Rotarians to organize each meeting, and we are a very labor-intensive club (very different from his Iowa club whose biggest fundraiser was charging each member for uneaten meals amounting to $50,000 per year); and (5) enjoy being Rotarians; we work hard, play hard, have laughs, have disagreements, but we end up enjoying being Rotarians.

Jim next outlined the board goals: (1) manage our real estate, as we have very recently voted to abandon our present clubhouse located between Oak Street and Townsend Avenue in favor of a new clubhouse elsewhere; while we proceed to sell our clubhouse and Scout lots, we must look for interim meeting places and look at all options; (2) continue our financial analysis with the leadership of Doug Roberts, Dwight Swisher, Vic Taylor, Ham Meserve, and Frank Helman; (3) determine our next facility after some real estate is sold; and (4) continue Connie’s budget with the leadership of Ham Meserve and Frank Helman, using our historical expenses, developing more meaningful data, and fine-tuning our process.

Jim concluded with his additional goals: (1) broaden our vocational and youth committee to address the larger population of youth beyond Interact while supporting Interact; (2) add vocational guidance and direction to our floundering youth, both in high school and beyond; (3) implement a club protection program, refined from the district guidelines, to protect minors and seniors; (4) meet the district’s Embracing Humanity Challenge Award based on multiple goals, many of which we already attain; (5) Moose on the Loose, dubbed tonight by Tony Curulla, “Toumoose Le Trek,” who will trek this weekend with Daren and Deb Graves and perhaps soon to Guatemala with Marty Peak Helman; (6) end meetings promptly at 8pm; and (7) communicate with all our board members, committee chairs, and event chairs.

Our meeting ended promptly at 8pm.

July 21 will feature David Eastwood on our Boothbay Region Student Aid Fund. Mike Thompson is innkeeper, Foster Stroup steward with waiters Linda Foster and Doug Harley, Bill Kautzmann 50/50, Bob Jacobson sergeant-at-arms, Cy Seifert greeter/invocation, Ham Meserve program chair, and Chip Griffin scribe.

To learn more about Rotary and about our Club and all the good stuff we do visit our website: www.boothbayharborrotary.org, or "friend" us on Facebook. Prospective members, visiting Rotarians and guests are always welcome to join us at our weekly meetings, held Thursday nights at our one-of-a-kind Clubhouse at 29 Oak Street in downtown Boothbay Harbor.Conviviality commences around 6:00 p.m., dinner is served promptly at 6:30, and we then have a short business meeting followed by a special speaker. The evening ends at 8:00 p.m.