November 14, 2014

All the news that's fit to print...and a lot that isn't

Jeff Dorsey, Editor

Paul Clarkson - Editor Emeritus John Tripp - Editor Emeritus

Club Meets at Noon each Friday at Stoney Creek Inn, 3809 Broadway in Quincy
2012-2013 Lincolnland District Exchange Clubs Best Bulletin Award Winner

Note: Due to the inclement weather that we are expecting tonight and tomorrow, we've made the decision to take down the Field of Honor flags this evening rather than wait until tomorrow afternoon. We'll get started around 4:30 or thereabouts. If you have some time after work this evening, please come out to the Veterans Home and help us take down the Field of Honor.

Thanks!

This Friday

Scheduled to be with us this Friday is Reg Ankrom. He will discuss the history of John Wood. Mike Elbe, the President of John Wood Community College will provide an introduction. Bring a prospective member and join us for Quincy's finest hour!

Friday Last

We met last Friday at the All Wars Museum at the Illinois Veteran's Home for our annual Veteran's Day program. The museum is unfortunately one of the best kept secrets in the area. You could spend hours going through the displays including the original Medal of Honor display for Lester Hammond.

Hammond, an Army corporal, sacrificed his life in the midst of the Korean War to save the remaining members of his patrol who were being overrun by hundreds of Chinese communists in North Korea in August of 1952.

Rick Gengenbacher was the M.C for the program and our speaker was Bob Craig, the Museum Curator. Bob is a Marine Corps veteran of Vietnam. He thanked the Club for being there and invited everyone to return to look at the over 1000 displays in the museum.

The following veterans in the Club introduced themselves and gave a short commentary on their service to our country. They were: Curt Moore (USAF), Mel Dillman (ARMY), Elvin Townsend ( NAVY Reserve), Sonny Christner (NAVY), Jim Lierly (ARMY) and Rick Gengenbacher (ARMY National Guard). With apologies to those I may have left out, other veterans in our Club but not in attendance are Hal Broadwater (ARMY), Fred Lauder (NAVY), Jimmy Louthen (ARMY), Jim Totsch (Air Force) and Skip Rueter (ARMY). Thank you gentleman, for your service to our great country.

Thanks to Mel Dillman, Rick Gengenbacher and Art Awerkamp for their work in preparing last week's meeting.

After the discussion and lunch in the museum, the Club began the process of installing the Field of Honor located behind the museum. That display will remain open until 11am Tuesday.

VIP Dates

11/14 - Jimmie Louthen turns 41 and Daron & Julie Duke celebrate their 16th anniversary

11/16 - Alan Musholt turns 51

11/17 - Jim & Kathy Schlepphorst celebrate their 35th anniversary

11/18 - Brian Musholt turns 45

11/20 - Board meeting - 11:45 at the Pier

12/5 - Give-a-Kid-a-Chance Dinner

This & That

John Spring delivered the opening prayer which included thoughts of our veterans and a special thought for Lane Evans, a former congressman and veteran who passed away last week. Evans was a schoolmate of John Spring as well.

President Curt Moore began the Pledge of Allegiance with a subdued "I".

Brian Koch held the card draw worth $605. Steve Green had the lucky ticket but drew an 8 of Hearts. Larger pot coming Friday.

President Kurt announced that he, along with Chuck Venvertloh and Joel Koch will chair the next edition of Character Champions.

Special guests this week included Kelli McCutchen and Kenyetta McFall of Quality Inn & Suites. They were guests of Perry Terwelp and Steve Green. Also with us was Army veteran Roger Thomas, father of Eric Thomas and Air Force veteran Dick McKinney, guest of Jeff Dorsey. Dick is the chairman for the Veteran's Parade which was held last Saturday. He took the opportunity to thank the Club for its involvement with the parade over the years.

With that said, thanks to those who carried the huge American Flag in the parade last Saturday.

Also, a huge thank you to Art Awerkamp for spearheading the Field of Honor display on the grounds of the Illinois Veteran's Home. Art took the opportunity to thank the committee that worked hard to make this fabulous display come true. That committee consists of Dennis Koch, Brian Koch, Joel Koch, Eric Thomas, Doug Greenwell, and Steve Green.

Special thanks to all who installed, manned and took down the Field of Honor last Friday thru Tuesday (Carlos Fernandez was also there on install day, he took the photo).

Don't forget the Veteran's Day Ceremony, orchestrated by Rick Gengenbacher, will be held Tuesday (this morning) at 10am at Lippincott Hall. It lasts one hour with Jeff Dorsey handling the MC work. Please plan on attending.

Come armed for the next several weeks with some extra cash as we will begin collecting our annual tip for Jennifer, our weekly waitress. For new members to the Club, we usually collect at least $10 from each member. If you attend all 50 meetings during the year, that comes to 20 cents a meeting.

Like us on Facebook

The National Exchange Club is trying to increase its presence on social media sites. One way to do that is to "Like" a site on Facebook. If you go to these links and click "Like", it will help the club, district and National Exchange Club promote the programs of service of Exchange to others. If you are on Facebook, please support Exchange by clicking Like! Here's the links:

National Exchange Club

Lincolnland District Exchange Clubs

Quincy Exchange Club

Quincy Gus Macker Site

Smoke on the River Site

In This Issue

Club Information

Curt Moore - President

Jared Haugh - President-Elect

Brian Koch - Vice President

Chris Parker - Treasurer

Cullan Duke - Secretary

Chuck Venvertloh - Immediate Past President

Board of Directors:

Steve Labs - 2015

Joel Koch - 2015
David Adam - 2016
Alan Musholt - 2016

Josh Klitz - 2017

Cory Watson - 2017

Lincolnland District

President - Bill VanKeuren, Mattoon

Division 10 Director - Joel Koch, Quincy

Board meets second Monday every month 11:45 at the Pier Restaurant

Office of the Secretary:

Cullan Duke

PO Box 1173

Quincy IL 62306

National Exchange Club

President - Lou Molitor

Region 3 Vice President - Katie Smith

Line of the Week

Goes to Mel Dillman, seated next to a covered wagon in the museum when Sonny Christner's birthday was announced. Mel pointing to the covered wagon yelled out,

- "Hey Sonny was this your prom ride?"

Web Pages

Catch more news and Pictures for the club on our webpages at www.quincyexchangeclub.org and

www.smokeontheriver.net

Or on our Facebook page at

https://www.facebook.com/quincyexchange

Thank you to everyone who helped make our inaugural Field of Honor a success! Remember, if you have time this evening, we need help taking the field down starting at about 4:30. Other than some cold weather, which was expected this time of year, we had some great weather during the day. Many people came through the field over the weekend and many, many more simply stopped and took pictures.

We could not have asked for better media coverage - our thanks to WGEM and KHQA TV and the Herald Whig for the spectacular coverage and interviews.

Phase 2 of the project starts now - the Flags of Honor program. We need to get subscriptions for those 1,000 flags to put up on Memorial Day, Flag Day, Independence Day and Labor Day. The subscription is $30 and will get a flag put up in front of their house from Dawn to Dusk. Folks can sign up on our website (Click on the Field of Honor logo to go to the Flags page), or we have a brochure that can be completed and mailed.

Exchange Education

Growth and Retention of Membership

Part of growth and retention for Exchange is building new clubs. So far this year (since July 1) the National Exchange Club has built 10 new clubs. In the Lincolnland District, we currently have two club building projects going - one in O'Fallon and our project to build a club in Decatur. Dennis and Joel Koch are the club builders for the Decatur club project with Adam Gibson (formerly from the Quincy are), our contact in Decatur. (Adam was a recent guest at our meeting in Quincy).

If you have any contacts in Decatur or know anyone in the Decatur area that you think might be interested in joining Exchange, please let Dennis or Joel know. We currently have 10-12 interested prospective members, but we need 20 to actually charter the club.

The Lincolnland District board will be considering a new 5-year strategic plan at their meeting in December. That plan calls for building 2-3 new clubs (Traditional, Collegiate and Excel) each year over the next five years. We've identified about 25 cities throughout the District where we would like to have a club. As we focus on those areas and conduct surveys to test the feasibility of clubs in those areas, we'll see if you have contacts in those areas.