President Sofie Ameloot welcomed everyone to the Centerville Rotary Club and lead the reciting of the Pledge. PDG Harvey Smith provided the prayer.
President Ameloot had several announcements:
- The thought of the day is from the English novelist, Aldous Huxley: “Experience is not what happens to you; it is what you do with what happens to you”.
- Today’s guests were:
- District 6670 Governor, Dottie Meade and her husband, Alan. Dottie is a member of the Fairborn club.
- Our Assistant District Governor, Steve Silverburg also attended who is a member of the West Chester club.
- Sofie thanked Dale Berry and Ron Bowersock for volunteering to handle meeting set up going forward
- Our exchange student, Pichpattra Waraprueks arrived this past Saturday. Thanks to Bill for the great welcoming sign and to Brad, Amy and Arnie for meeting her at the airport.
- Next Board meeting is on Monday at Centerville Library at 5:30PM.
- Our greeters were Brian Hayes and Frank Perez.
Directors/ Others report to the club:
- Pancake Committee (Adam Manning)- next meeting is August 29th at 11AM at Yankee Trace.
- Social (Kelly McDonald)-
- Next Club social event is at Sueño’s Restaurant in Dayton on August 29th at 5:30 PM. Watch for email from Kelly to sign up, if you have not yet done so.
- Club’s Sept 26th weekly meeting will be at the Kennard Nature Nook at Grant Park. This is our re-scheduled meeting to install 3 bricks in our memorial garden in memory of past members. Sign-up sheets were available at today’s and future meetings to confirm attendance and to select your lunch option.
- Club social for September will be a pool party at Brad Huffman’s home on the 26th.
- Club is looking for a member interested in hosting a social event in October. Please see Sofie or Kelly if you can help.
- Business Committee (Sofie A.)- group met recently and update will be shared with club at next meeting.
- Environmental Committee (Dave Trout)-working with Park District to purchase/ plant trees at Grant Park. Details to follow.
Rotary Means Business segment- This is a new segment to club to share news of the community to highlight Rotary involvement or to get to know one another better.
- Pat Beckel shared how he recently met two owners of businesses interested in moving to Centerville. He connected one to city officials who were very helpful, and they will be bringing their school to this area.
Happy Bucks for this quarter go to Operation Warm, our annual drive to purchase winter coats for children in need in our area. Our Sergeant of Arms was Pat Beckel with help from Brian Hayes. Happy Bucks were given for:
- Pat B.- membership committee met recently. Looking for suggestions from the club of people making a difference in our community to recruit for Rotary. Pat’s youngest son is starting his senior year of high school and oldest is a freshman at OSU.
- Brian H. – son and his wife just closed on buying a home.
- Raj G.- his daughter is off to college to earn her Masters.
- Lisa GM- happy to be here
- Andrea S.- Son in law is starting college at Wright State
- Kelly- grateful for all the club does to help others and proud of his mother-in-law who was the first woman to join her Rotary club.
- Don S- attended services recently for Edie (Edna) Landsiedel who was the widow of a long-time club member (Jim) and attended many club functions. She was also very involved in helping the community.
- Boyd P- for our District Governor and guests
- Steve Silverburg (ADG) - the warm greetings from the club on his first visit here.
- Dottie Meade (DG) – also appreciated the warm club welcome and all that the club does. There are 45 clubs in our district who are doing amazing things. It is wonderful being a Rotarian.
- Sofie A.- for our guests and great to see Mark Balsan. Also appreciate the club members who have helped sponsor her upcoming ride in the Tour de Gem. She will be raising funds for the Rotary Foundation.
- Brian H. – requests all club members to pay their bill.
- Frank P. – missing next meetings as he is off on a trip to Alaska.
- Uriah A. – for our guests and fined himself as he needs to leave early
- Mark B.- happy to be back
- Elda GG.- just happy
- Harvey S.- in honor of our District Governor
- Adam M.- for sitting between Rotary royalty (Harvey & Lee).
- Lee H. – provided the weekly farm report (which he knows everyone enjoys) - corn is maturing nicely, soybeans are in blossom or in their pods and 3rd cutting of hay is occurring.
- Jim H. – our guests and the DG
- Chuck K.- our guests and for a minor catastrophe at home. His new dog decided to eat part of a pill from Chuck’s prescription medicine. Following a Vet Urgent Care visit and a $1000 bill, dog is doing fine.
- Ron H.- welcome to DG and her husband. He and Chuck K. assembled Pancake signs recently for our fundraiser this year.
- Crissy A.- great to see Sivaji at the meeting.
- Sivaji S.- his oldest son is starting at UD in their School of Business.
- Ron B.- just happy
- Dale B.- realized he must be older than most at meeting who have talked about their children starting college. His daughter will be retiring from teaching at the end of this school year.
- Don O. – coats for the needy.
- Dave T. – leaving for a visit to Colorado. His son is at OSU.
- Sofie- her youngest daughter is off to start college tomorrow.
Our speaker this week was Dottie Meade, our District 6670 Governor.
Kelly McDonald introduced her by sharing that Dottie is a retired educator after spending 39 years as a teacher, Career Development Coordinator, and administrator. She joined Rotary in 1990 as a member of the Fairborn club. Over the years, she has been heavily involved in the club’s and District projects. During the last several years, Dottie has been trained as a Rotary Leadership Institute (RLI) trainer and then became the District Coordinator for RLI for the past 5 years.
Dottie started her talk off with making a couple presentations.
- Brian Hayes was recognized as a member of the Paul Harris Society who are Rotarians who have pledged a $1000 or more to the Rotary Foundation per year.
- Past and current club presidents, Adam Manning and Sofie Ameloot were presented with the club’s 2023-24 Rotary Citation certificate recognizing achievement of at 85% of club goals for last year.
Dottie also highlighted Don Stewart’s service to the District as the long-time treasurer.
Dottie started her remarks with the challenge for all Rotarians to grow their hearts for Rotary leveraging Stephanie Urchick, Rotary International President’s theme of the Magic of Rotary. Specifically, we can all find ways to make our clubs irresistible via opportunities to talk about Rotary, who we are, what we do and invite others to join.
Dottie shared some of Stephanie’s key goals:
- Each district should strive to add 100 new members. For our district, that translates to 2+ new members per club.
- Add 4 new clubs per district. These could include more satellite, E clubs and Interact/ Rotaract clubs, all designed to help attract new members.
- All Rotarians practice saying “Yes” whenever possible. E.G. volunteer for a new project, step up to a challenge, bring in a new member and mentor her/ him.
District wide Environmental Service Day will be on April 26, 2025. Goal is to have all 45 clubs fielding events that day to help our local communities.
Dottie also shared her challenge to all District members now giving to the Rotary Foundation to donate an additional $67/ each this year. This would generate an additional $154,000 to this highly rated charity.
At least two polio fundraisers are planned for this year. The first is on October 10th in Beavercreek and will be a Karaoke Night. All funds will go to the Polio Foundation.
Dottie encouraged members to check out the District 6670 pod cast. You can access it at “Rotary District 6670, Service Above Self” or via the QR code below.
Dottie closed with thanking our club for all we are doing and asked us to consider how we can use the Magic of Rotary to make even more contributions to our communities.
Next week’s meeting is a club assembly with updates on a number of club programs & events.