This is my final message as your Membership chair and it is a bitter-sweet moment for me. This task has been as fun as much as it has been an honor.  And it has been anything but a thankless job for both Julie Wesling and myself.  As much as she and I have appreciated all of your thanks and pats on the back, we see as clearly as anyone all of the different contributors to making this year's membership drive such a success.  We are humbled to be an integral part of growing our club with as long and important history as ours. But our role has mostly been that of conducting a larger collaborative effort by each and every one of you.

Thanks to your support, we've enjoyed a record-breaking year and welcomed 116 new members in 2012!  Congratulations to Hank Duckworth on winning our Membership contest and sponsoring 20 new members.  Like Hank and our runner-up Jepp Walter, many of you have invited your friends and colleagues, vendors and neighbors to come out and share in what generations of Jacksonvillians have built. You each deserve the thanks and the pats on the backs from not only Julie and me, not only our leadership and members but mostly from all the recipients of the good works that this club does for our fellow city residents.  It is our city's most in need, who have and will be the recipients of SBMC generosity, the young and old of all races, past, present and future that will appreciate your efforts toward membership the most of all.  It is on their behalf, that we thank each of you.