Last Wednesday was the Rotary picnic at Jimmy and Bekki Hutto's house. Thank you to the Huttos and the the fellowship committee for all their work in putting this together!
Welcome to the Rotary Club of Kerrville!
Satellite Club Meeting--THIRD TUESDAY of every month
5:15 p. m. Meet and Greet, 5:30 p. m. Meeting
Red Cross Building, 333 Earl Garrett St., Kerrville
Thank you to all who answered the call to help package food last Saturday for Rise Against Hunger.
We packaged 14,256 meals in little more than two hours! These meals will be sent to where they are needed most and we will be able to track where our hard work is being sent.
In my refusal to allow COVID rob us of yet another event to help individuals in need, I worried that we might not have enough volunteers. BUT that was not the case. I continue to quote the Rotary slogan of "People of Action," because in this very difficult year, that is what we have been as a club. We've served our community as we always have. We showed up when needed. And, we stepped up with wallets in hand when asked.
I thank each of you. I would also like to commend our Tivy Interact Club members and their sponsor, Shanna Vecchio! They were truly instrumental in helping us achieve our goal today.
Our food drive items will be delivered to Christian Assistance Ministry.
Tammy
Our Rotary Club year is coming to a close, but we are not sitting back and counting the days. WE ARE PEOPLE OF ACTION!
As you know, we successfully completed our Rise Against Hunger mission on Saturday. It was only possible because the determination and Service Above Self efforts of more than 30 Rotarians and 12-15 Interact students and their sponsors. To repeat, we packaged 14,256 meals in two hours! We will be tracking where our boxes are being shipped and will report back.
Blood Drives
In my first meeting as club president, I committed to quarterly blood drives, a new project for our club. This project was personal to me, but more importantly, COVID has caused a blood supply issue that I hoped to address. We have successfully completed three blood drives so far and our final blood drive of the Rotary year will be THURSDAY, JUNE 24 at Crenwelge Motors.
I will send out the sign up link when it is available and I hope you will participate.
So far this year, our club is responsible for the following donations:
• 72 Whole Blood Units
• 14 Double Red Cell Units
• 2 Red Cell and Plasma Units
Thank you so much for supporting this effort.
Future donations and projects
Your board met today and we have shored up our budget, our goals and are making plans to support several other projects and organizations with funds not used due to COVID!
I will report more on this once we have everything finalized, but it is going to be EXCITING!
Memorial grove
One of our goals this year was create a "Rotary Grove," a place to honor longtime Rotarians who have passed away. We will have a groundbreaking soon and will report further at that time. It is really going to be nice!
Scholarships
Our scholarship committee, headed up by Roy Boudreaux and Donna Peterson, has completed the application review process and we have begun notifying students. We will be providing $1,000 scholarships to 25 local students. They are broken down as follows:
• Tivy = 16
• Ingram = 2
• Hill Country High School = 1
• OLH = 1
• College students = 5
Citizenship Awards
Our Youth Citizenship Awards luncheon will be held June 2. As you will recall, our club has partnered with Schreiner University to recognize fifth grade students in elementary schools throughout the county. It is an amazing effort headed up by member Jeff Anderson and results in $20,000 in scholarships from Schreiner University.
Induction
Our very own Kristy Vandenberg will be inducted next month as the Rotary District 5840 Governor! She has chosen to have the ceremony at the Arcadia Theater and we are all invited. Due to limitations on gatherings, out fellowship committee budget will be used to allow for all club members to attend.
We will provide the date and time once we have finalized the plans.
Tomorrow's meeting
Tomorrow we will be hearing from FBI Special Agent Christopher Combs. He has spoken with our club before and provides incredible insight into many activities that we hear and read about from across the nation.
We are so grateful that he has agreed to meet with us again. Thank you to member Bryant Truitt for coordinating this meeting for us.
I hope to see you at the Kroc Center tomorrow!
Tammy
Click on the link below for a replay of 4-28 to hear from Roman Garcia and Mary Ellen Summerlin, two candidates for the Kerrville City Council.
Ramon was born in Austin and raised in Kerrville.
He has helped with Habitat for Humanity, UGRA, Community Service along with assisting in the 2050 plan for Kerrville.
He believes in public service and the people are the boss.
Do we have enough affordable housing in Kerrville? If we are to bring more jobs to the city we need housing.
City codes are too complex they finally updated the 2006 codes in 2018.
Need to insure water sources, Citizens are first, values principles.
Mary presented her program in bullet points.
1. Experience Using city resources, city council & EIC
2. Education, Degree's delivery on topics.
3. Tax policy, Believes not lowering taxes just to lower them, good physical management, Operation management, manage debt.
4. City council when, how much, and what needs to be done.
5. Fair representation, have elections on all major debt, not the emergency expenses.
6. No attack adds, positive ideas, 10 years in public office.
Special thanks goes to Ingrid Painter for her help in setting up this forum.
Clint introduces the man and woman running for City Council Place 1
Mary Ellen Summerlin
Roman Garcia
Click below for the Zoom Replay of the meeting April 21, 2021. Anne Overby provided great information on Arcadia Live for all those in attendance.
Anne Overby provided the program last Wednesday on the newly renovated Arcadia in downtown Kerrville. The venue operated as a movie theater from 1926 until the late 1980's and was closed for over thirty years. After a number of different owners and good intentions to reopen it, the theater was gifted to Kerrville's Fourth on the River organization by owners Steve and Shawna Huser. The Arcadia Theater is now known as Arcadia Live! and is a multi purpose venue, featuring live music weekly, a variety of performances and is available for receptions and private parties.
This is the original facade from 1926.
It was renovated to the Art Deco architecture in the late 1940's.
Here's a slide showing the original and now renovated front elevation.
The building honors the past by retaining elements of the two different architectural styles, while updating the main room with numerous platforms and seating areas, a large stage, and overhead glass doors that open onto a spacious deck overlooking the Guadalupe River.
Fellow Rotarian and WW II veteran Glen Crain was surprised with a birthday party in his honor at the Veteran's Center. Glen also met a fellow vet who shared the same birthday.
Clint Morse introduced a Tivy High School senior, Jonathan Halpin. Jonathan has received offers of a full ride college scholarship from both the Navy and Air Force, and plans to attend Texas A&M in the fall to study engineering. He will participate in the Corp at A&M, and will enter the armed services upon college graduation. He wants to be a pilot, and will soon decide which of the scholarship offers he will accept. Jonathan is the Corps Commander at the Tivy Air Force Junior ROTC program this year, and well as the Tivy band drum major. Jonathan is obviously a hard worker with many accomplishments already, and we wish him the best of luck in the future.
Congratulations to Captain David Swyers of the Salvation Army, who was promoted to major. With this promotion, David will be transferring to Florida to continue his good work there.
Kristy Vandenberg will be the next District 5840 Governor for Rotary. Congratulations and a big thank you go to Kristy for her hard work in numerous positions in our club, and now she will continue her work leading our district.
The Rise Against Hunger event will be May 8th, where we will be assembling packages of food to serve those in need. Go to our website to sign up. Kerrvillerotary.org
The annual picnic will resume this year, with a socially distanced event at the Hutto's house on May 5th. Check your email to RSVP.
Click below for the Zoom Replay of the meeting April 14, 2021. Father Rafal Duda was the speaker and he shared how a small boy from Poland who loved soccer became a priest and landed in Kerrville, TX.
Clint introduced our guest speaker Father Rafal Duda
Rafal is with the Notre Dame Catholic Church Kerrville.
Rafal told us he remembers being on a soccer field when he was one year old. By age of 10 he was on an organized team. By 17 he was playing second division teams.
He thought that he wanted to be famous and have cars, money and nice things. He then bought his first Bible. At 19 still playing ball he has some problems with his ankle. Then he decided that if he passed his test he would go to seminary school. His parents approved.
At seminary school it was like they were always trying to test and question his motivation and commitment to God. They kept asking and he kept answering to their satisfaction. He finally reached his goal of becoming a priest.
After meeting some folks from US he thought Texas sounded good.
First he went to San Antonio, from there to Kerrville in February of 2019. He still likes and plays soccer & Chess. He speaks 5 languages.
Click the link below to review the Zoom Replay of the 4/7/2021 Rotary Club of Kerrville. This meeting recognized First Responders from throughout Kerr County for their excellent work and dedication to county residents.
The Rotary Club sponsored the First Responder Awards program again last Wednesday. This program recognizes achievements by outstanding individuals from various agencies in the Kerr County area, and provides funds for continuing education for the first responders.
Following the presentation of the colors, Jeff Wendling provided the invocation and pledge, and introduced the head of the agencies that were honored today.
Here are the award recipients:
Kerr County Sheriff's Department Officer of the Year: Captain Carl Arrendondo
Corrections Officer of the Year: Sargent Brenda Cardona
Kerrville Fire Department EMS Person of the year: Firefighter/ Paramedic Ryan Michel
Kerrville Fire Department Fire Fighter of the year: Driver Casey Goodman
Kerrville Fire Department Officer of the year: Lieutenant Jaran Floyd
Kerrville Police Department Officer of the year: Jacob Trevino
Ingram Police Department Officer of the year: Officer Michael McDonald
Kerr County Volunteer First Responder of the year: Allison Sullivan Moyer
Texas DPS Trooper of the year: Trooper V Michael Bacon
Texas Parks and Wildlife Game Warden of the Year: Game Warden III Carson Wardlow
Lifetime achievement awards were presented to the following individuals:
Kerr County Sheriff's office: Sheriff Rusty Hierholzer
Kerr County Sheriff's office: Chief Deputy Clay Barton
Kerrville Police Department: Chief David Knight
Elm Pass Volunteer Fire Department: Chief Jerry Vincent
Former Constable Gene Huffaker
At the end of the program, Rotarians Tammy Prout, Marta Diffen, Jeff Harris and Jeff Wendling all voluntarily received a pie in the face, as part of achieving the challenge of selling 400 raffle tickets for our fund raiser. Thank you to our Rotary leaders!
I recently reported to you that Rotarian Glen Crain's wife had past away and that he has not been able to attend club meetings while he cared for her over the past year.
We have a great opportunity to show him how much we care about him on Thursday, from 3-5 p.m., at the VFW Post 1480 on Thompson Drive. Glen will be turning 97 on Thursday and a surprise party has been planned at his honor at the post. Glen is a WWII veteran and just a wonderful man.
The VFW is asking that we stop in and say "hi" to him and bring birthday cards. On behalf of the Rotary Club of Kerrville, we will present Glen with a Paul Harris Fellow membership!
As I've mentioned in the past, there are several of our members that cannot attend in-person meetings and do not use the internet. If you sat with a person you haven't seen on Zoom or in-person, please reach out to them. We don't know what our fellow members have been going through if we don't see them weekly.
Rise Against Hunger
We have planned our Rise Against Hunger food preparation event for May 8 at the Hill Country Youth Event Center. In July, I asked each of you to step out of your comfort zone and actively participate in one of our service projects. If you have not been able to do so this year, please consider volunteering on this day. We will begin at 9 a.m. and will need 50-60 volunteers to work shifts over four hours.
The annual picnic will resume this year, with a socially distanced event at the Hutto's house on May 5th. Check your email to RSVP.
The Texas Military Department will operate a mass vaccination clinic from Monday through Friday, May 3-7, at Kerrville First United Methodist Church, 321 Thompson Drive.
For 5840 schedule of events Home Page | District 5840 (rotary5840.org)
Guest attending today
Marta
We had 47 people attending the live meeting & 31 on zoom.
Click the link below to review the Zoom Replay of the 3/31/2021 Rotary Club of Kerrville. This meeting finalized our 2021 Main Event Raffle and winners were drawn for all prizes culminating in the drawing for 10K in gift cards! Thanks so much to everyone who supported local club projects by purchasing a ticket for this raffle!
Service Above Self
Kerrville, TX 78028
United States of America