The meeting was convened by President, Katie Dukeshire, who opened with more unusual bits of trivia – seemingly random, but is there a connection? She covered Confederate secession, Volkswagens and Howard Hughes. First person to decipher the connections wins free banana pudding for a year…
Cliff Parker provided us with the Invocation and led the Pledge of Allegiance.
Announcements
- We were delighted to welcome a guest, Miranda Ervin, newly appointed assistant general manager of the Burlington Royals. Ryan Keur introduced her and she sounds extremely well qualified for her position. Or Ryan’s!
- We also warmly welcomed Bob Bircham, a guest of Ed Woodall – and yes, we’re talking prospective member! Thanks Ed…Bob is with Western and Southern Insurance.
- We heard the first reading for Laura Brannock.
- Following the usual denials of birthdays and gratitude for reminders of anniversaries, Katie thanked everyone who has contributed to the canned food drive. In fact, Katie’s mom has put her foot down and is making Katie box up the donations stored at her house because they’ve spilled out into the garage.
Happy Clams
- Susan Watson is heading to Thailand to go scuba diving with her son.
- It’s another year of “The Cookie Momster,” Carolyn Rhode, hawking Girl Scout cookies for all dietary needs, including our Rotary food drive. All in good taste, of course…
Randy Piland – Rotary Shelter Box
Phillip Stewart introduced our guest speaker, Randy Piland. Randy has fifty plus years involvement with Boy Scouts. At a jamboree in England several years ago, he came across a Rotary Shelter Box display. The boxes were developed initially in 2000 and had their first widespread use following the Aceh tsunami in 2004. Since then, over 100,000 have been distributed world-wide following major natural disasters and conflict displacements. Rotary International recently adopted the Shelter Box as a formal Rotary initiative and an American site for production and distribution has been established in Florida.
The Box contents vary somewhat depending on the environmental conditions where they are being sent. Boy Scouts are often deployed in those areas to assist with set-up.
Each box costs $1000 which includes all the items, the box itself and the costs of shipping and distribution. Rotary International has set a goal for every club in the world to sponsor one box per year.
Card Drawing
We were so disappointed that Lloyd Carter drew a losing card. Well, maybe Lloyd was!
Upcoming Programs
January 26 – Charlie Cobb
February 2 – Penn Corbett/Micah Fox
February 9 – Mike Dunning
Closing
At the conclusion of the meeting, we all stood to recite the Rotary Four Way Test and the meeting was adjourned. Until next week…