MEETING: Friday December 23, 2011 EDITOR: Tom Hymer
WELCOME GUESTS: Jeff Roberson introduced his brother Ron from Washington, DC. Don Rogers introduced his guest John Stutzman.
SERGEANTS: Brad Thompson and Jeff Brewer were last minute substitute sergeants who seemed overly excited about the opportunity. Therefore they went back to the old bag of tricks and fined President Curtis and Treasurer Don. Program manager Darren Wicks attracted the attention of the sergeants because he had no program to introduce. Darren paid his penance and then they invoked the guilty by association law to fine his table mates, Dan Power, Paul Brown and Steve Conard. Talking about a White Christmas Sergeant Thompson asked how many White Christmases have there been in Hutchinson and when did the National Weather Service begin to record the data. Going from table to table they collected mucho dinero due to bad guesses and other silly responses. They even busted gadget freak Dane Power for cheating to get the answers with his smart phone. The answers – 13 White Christmas since 1888. In the category of trash and rubbish fines Don Rogers paid for Mr. Thompsons dumpster being placed askew by the Stutzmans refuse truck.
ANNOUNCEMENT: Don Rogers announced that Stutzmans will be offering a Recycle Points program to reward those who recycle. The points can be used like coupons and applied to the purchase of all kinds of products. Starting in January a monitoring device will be attached to the dumpsters to measure the weight of recycled materials. March 5, 2012 is when the program will go into operation.
ANNOUNCEMENT: Jay Pitzer announced a Casino night will be held for the Kansas Ground Water Association on Thursday January 19th and 15 dealers will be needed.
ANNOUNCEMENT: President Curtis Mitchell talked about the upcoming Ambucs Awareness month and proposed the strategy of advertising on the electronic billboards in Hutchinson and making contacts to learn more about such a plan. On another matter of club business Curtis mentioned the NJCAA Tournament will be coming and plans need to made for printing the T-shirts. The Tournament will be held March 20 24, 2012.
PROGRAM: Actually Darren Wicks had a program for today, he himself presented The True Spirit of Christmas as requested by President Curtis. This is how he did it. He called on various members to share their most meaningful Christmas stories. Tom, Jeff B, Jeff R, Rita Joy, Doug, Dane, Dan, Fred, and Harley shared the Christmases that were most meaningful to them. Then Darren shared. He was born into a poor family single mother with other kids. He was adopted as a little boy for which he is very thankful. His thankfulness caused him to visit the Salvation Army to ask about a most needy family. This is a family of six children including twins. A few months ago the mother was experiencing a difficult delivery and went into ICU. Her recovery required the father to take time off from his job to care for the kids and he eventually lost his job. Darren proposed that the members of the club donate some money for this family to help them and say Merry Christmas.
THE FOLLOW-UP: After todays meeting Don Grossardt, Jay Pitzer, Darren, and his eight year old granddaughter delivered the box of money to the family. $720 was raised along with a ham and can goods from Rita Joy. As they were leaving her house they could hear her exclamations of thanks for what she had been given. Darren Wicks, the Christmas Angel, no other words are necessary.
50/50 DRAWING: Doug Foss won the 50/50 pot of $22 and put the money in the box for the aforementioned family.
NEWSLETTER DRAWING: George Kinny was not present to win $40, but Jeff Brewer said that if George was here he would have donated the money to the family. Next weeks question for $5 is: Can you name 3 Ambucs who shared their most meaningful Christmas stories?
NEXT WEEKS PROGRAM December 30, 2011: Lori Webb, Director of Sales, Recruitment and Retention of Members for the Hutchinson/Reno Chamber of Commerce.