You are invited to attend 

"Y'All Serve: 

Cultivating Leadership," 

a leadership recruitment event Wednesday, May 1, 4:30-6 pm

Room 206 at the Reuter Center.

. 

We hope you will attend this event to learn more about volunteer leadership opportunities, to chat with  members of the Steering Council  and staff, and to determine if you are interested in providing service to OLLI.  You can mingle, ask questions, and enjoy some refreshments as well.  

Please RSVP to Cindy at berrymanfink@gmail.com by April 29 if you plan to attend

The Special Interest Group, Financial Strategies in Retirement, 

invites you to join them  

Friday, May 3, 1:30 pm

for a discussion of    

"How to Maintain Growth Using a 

Rising Dividend Strategy"

Chris Amys, financial advisor with Wells Fargo here in Asheville, will join us for a discussion on increasing your cash flow from equity investments using a rising dividend strategy. Chris comes highly recommended by one of our members and will be making a presentation followed by an opportunity to ask questions about this or any other topic.

REWINDING THE FIFTIES

The Reuter Center Singers

in performance

Friday, May 17, 7 pm

The concert will be full of favorite tunes from high school and college days!  A car from the '50s will be on-site for photo ops and will add to the fun!      

    Don't miss this toe-tapping good time!   

Please note the date of the concert has changed to 

Friday, May 17,  7 pm

Blue Ridge Orchestra Concert

Sunday, May 5, 3 pm

St. Mattias Episcopal Church

1 Dundee Street, Asheville

Season Finale

Bach's Cantata No. 80  "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott"  with the 

Asheville Chamber Players Chorus

Telemann's Concerto for Three Trumpets

Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 5   "Reformation,"  Movements 3 and 4

Donations gratefully accepted.

OLLI's 

Marketing Committee Needs YOU!   

If you love marketing, writing, communications, and photography, we invite you to join the OLLI Marketing Committee!

The Marketing Committee and the

 Interested?  We would love to talk with you and answer any questions you might have.  You are also welcome to attend our monthly meetings and get a sense of what we do and how we operate.   

Carol Gillen,  

Marketing Committee Chair, 

 828-253-2282, carol@gillen.com

Charlotte Goedsche 

speaks on 

 Tuesday, May 21, 7 pm

Room 102A,  Reuter Center  

Free and open to the public

The rapid decline of the beautiful cerulean warbler led Charlotte Goedsche on her 15-year journey to document their activities on the Blue Ridge Parkway just north of Asheville. She'll discuss her research and share what she's learned, including how she tells individual birds apart by their songs, and what really goes on at the nest.

More information, visit the Elisha Mitchell Audubon Society website.

DuPont Forest and 

the Blue Ghost Fireflies 

Wednesday, May 1, 7 pm

Unitarian Church

1 Edwin Place

The Western North Carolina Sierra Club will present a program on how the land that became DuPont State Forest was protected from private development. The Blue Ghost Fireflies, one of the wonders of DuPont State Forest, will be also featured.  

Free and open to the public.  

Jointly sponsored by WNC Alliance and Asheville Green Drinks.

Location: Unitarian Church, 1 Edwin Place, Asheville.  

For more information, contact: judymattox@sbcglobal.net, 828-683-2176

  NC Stage Presents    

This Week   

April 28-May 4, 2013      

Next Week

And Beyond

 Teaching History with a Passion: Mary Lasher

 By David Langdon  

After teaching high school students for several years, she moved with her family to Huntsville, Alabama, which at that time was the engineering center for NASA. Mary has long thought engineering and technology are key factors in our country's greatness, and she relished teaching at the University of Alabama/Huntsville, where engineers appreciated history. Although her early interests were American and European history, she came to know through reading and travel the historical importance of the non-Western world. An avid and critical reader, she takes scholarship seriously and cautions that many writers today can be casual about the subject and the rigorous standards required for writing history.

Before retiring, Mary lived in Greenville, South Carolina, where, in her work for the school district, she established a program for gifted students and wrote grants. She also enjoyed teaching graduate courses in history at Furman University over two decades as an adjunct instructor. Upon retiring Mary was persuaded by her partner, Tom Sanders, to move to Asheville and teach at what was then the North Carolina Center for Creative Retirement at UNC Asheville. Lasher has taught, team taught, or coordinated 42 courses for College for Seniors at OLLI at UNC Asheville. She spends a great deal of time developing history coursework and will work on a specific class idea for months and years before putting together an exact course curriculum.

Deciding to do things a bit differently in the new era of her life, Mary built a round house on the side of a mountain. Mary quips she was tired of living in a rectangular house with four walls and right angle corners. During holidays and summers she keeps busy with her two sons and their families that include grandsons ranging from age four to 16. In Asheville she delights in hanging out with friends, engaging in her film and book clubs, working out, and tending her cherished oriental lilies. Mary is a past president of Asheville Sister Cities and Asheville's branch of American Association of University Women.

Mary Lasher is among the most colorful history instructors in the College for Seniors at OLLI. She appreciates humor and satire of people like Jonathan Swift and Stephen Colbert. Her classes are strengthened by her diligence and discipline and by her travels to unusual destinations such as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Iran and Turkey. Her greatest travel memories are to Africa's game country, an area she would like to visit again. Those of you in her spring class, The Rise of the West, are enjoying the benefits of having Mary Lasher as an instructor in the College for Seniors.  

Asheville Living Treasures

Recognition Ceremony

Sunday, May 5, 1:30 pm

Manheimer Room, Reuter Center

The Selection Committee of Asheville Living Treasures is pleased to announce that the recipients of the Spring 2013 Asheville Living Treasures award have been chosen. Thelma Porter, Julia Ray and Hazel & John Robinson will be officially inducted at the Recognition Ceremony.

Join in the celebration recognizing and thanking these amazing individuals for their contributions to the betterment of our community. The ceremony is free and open to the public.

Thelma Porter, businesswoman, community activist, and philanthropist is known far and wide for her generosity. She has given a helping hand to an enormous number of people. Her retail establishment provided for the needs of a then segregated African American community. She never turned someone away because they didn't have the money. Thelma was health conscious before it was fashionable. Once the Urban Renewal "writing was on the wall," her interest in health led to a long career at the YWCA. Thelma is 92 years old.

Julia Ray was integral to the racial integration and growth of the YWCA of Asheville.  She was part of a group of YW supporters called the YWCA Boosters. After the White and Black branches of the YWCA consolidated, new challenges regarding race emerged. Julia and the other members of the Booster Club provided support for operations, and they also provided youth scholarships, organized trips, and developed enrichment programs. While their initial purpose was to support the YWCA, over the years the Booster Club became a close-knit group of friends, Black and White. Julia was actively involved with Friends of the YMI and was on the committee that raised funds and implemented the first Goombay Fesitival. Julia is 97 years old.

Hazel & John Robinson started the Montford Park Players (MPP) in 1973, with the fateful words from John "Why don't you do it?" With a small amount of money, a seemingly endless supply of energy, and more tenacity than a bulldog, Hazel formed the acting company with John's support. Thousands of people have been introduced to Shakespeare through MPP, now the longest running Shakespeare company in North Carolina. The contributions John and Hazel have given to the arts community in Asheville are priceless. John is 90 years old and Hazel is 87.