Greetings fellow Rotarians!  Tonight we held our annual Service Above Self Dinner where we recognized several individuals for their selfless service to the community. The evening was marked by spirits, food and great music. We started out by recognizing individuals from the Essex Rescue, Essex Junction Fire Department, Essex Police Department and Essex Fire Department.  Stephen Dunning, an ambulance driver from Essex Rescue, was recognized for the heroism he displayed during a fire last April. Raymond Weed from the Essex Junction Fire Department was honored for forty years of service to that department. Michelle Hodgson from the Essex Police Department was recognized for her extra efforts in improving the efficiency of operations in her department.  Corporal George Henry, the EMS captain for the Essex Fire Department was honored for overseeing the department’s medical and first response units and for his role in providing hurricane relief efforts to Haiti.  The 2016 recipient of our Club’s Service Above Self Award was Zachariah Fike, the founder and CEO of Purple Hearts Reunited. This non-profit organization strives to track down recipients of Purple Heart medals and to either reunite those medals with their recipients or their families.  To date, Captain Fike’s organization has located and returned more than 150 medals to military families. In addition to being honored as this year’s recipient of this award, a Paul Harris Fellowship was bestowed in Captain Fike’s name for his service.

 

            Our Club’s 50^th anniversary celebration will be held on Wednesday, April 13^th at 5:30pm.  As part of the celebration, the 50th anniversary committee is looking for photographs from Rotary events over the past 50 years.  If you have photographs - hard copies from the early years or digital copies from later years - please get them to Jeff Cabanaw as he is putting together a video for us that will be shown at the 50^th anniversary dinner.  If you would like the hard copies returned to you, please indicate that on the envelope so that Jeff can get them back to the right person. 

 

 

            We are still looking for a few people to volunteer for shifts at the Heavenly Pantry Food Shelf on Thursday, February 25^th.  Please contact Sharon Dettenrieder if you would like to volunteer.

 

Upcoming Meeting Schedule:  February 24, 2016 – We will be holding our monthly charitable committee meetings and hearing from Max Levy about the proposed Essex Town Budget.

 

For the complete list of upcoming speakers and information about the Club, please go to our website at www.essexrotary.org   Be sure to also visit us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/EssexVermontRotary

 

       Yours in Rotary,