A Rotary ‘accidental quartet’ of Jodie McCalla, Jim Morrison, Lou Ellen Werry, and Gordon Amsbary debuted at the regular Gallipolis Rotary club meeting for member Paul Koch, on the occasion of a belated April birthday. The not-quite-ready-for-primetime singers attempted to score big time for Paul with their rendition of Happy Birthday, but may still need to keep their day jobs! Our club has a long tradition whereby the Fellowship Chair, Gordon Amsbary, seeks a small fine of a dollar or two and the member then gets to name his quartet or have the entire club sing for the occasion. Today was just one of those special days! Gordo also ‘fined’ Kevin Petrie for a bit of advertising on his Car Quest shirt. He continued to wax eloquently announcing May as International Dental Awareness Month and that today is National Law Day. Mixed in with all of the above, member Margaret Evans arrived a bit late and was asked to contribute a dollar to the club!

Welcome—Club President, Shirley Doss, welcomed members and guests to our meeting. Our visiting Rotarians today included Frank Capehart from Pt. Pleasant and Joe Craig, from Lumberton, NC. Joe is with Heartland Publishers and was a guest of Sammy Lopez. We had a great turnout of regular members today and it was great to see Jeff Lanham and Dave Wiseman again! Thanks, everyone, for making Rotary your starting point of the day today!

Split-The-Pot—Member, Lee Saltzgaber, jumped in early and ran our STP for the meeting. Ticket sales were brisk today and our small pot grew to a respectable $10.00! Our lucky winner today was Kevin Dennis! This makes two in a row for the lucky guy! Kevin made a valiant effort in the drawing for the ‘Big One’ of $89.00, but came up a bit short with the eight of clubs. Our pot continues to grow for another week! Our Foundation Fine was assessed by Kevin against anyone NOT wearing white pants today. He was careful to emphasize this was outerwear!

Program—Our featured speaker for the day was member Bob Hood, who presented a special talk updating the club regarding our Gallia Tourism Office. Bob offered an interesting talk today featuring a PowerPoint presentation which will be used when the Ohio Director of Tourism comes to town this week. Our local tourism office is funded by the 3% lodging tax paid at our local hotels and motels. Not surprising the summer months tend to be the busiest for tourism locally and yet fall, winter, and spring athletic events often fill up available rooms. Our speaker identified a number of important events that will be occurring in our area that our draws for tourism. Ohio Chautauqua will be coming again this July 17-21 and will be under the tent in the City Park. The new riverboat, Queen of The Mississippi, will call on Gallipolis October 2 and 9. Bob also mentioned collaboration with Mason County Tourism Board as well as with the Jackson County Tourism Board in an effort to highlight the area’s local Amish businesses. Members enjoyed the time of Q & A at the conclusion of Bob’s prepared remarks. Excellent program, Bob! Thanks for taking the time to update us on the fine events coming up this year.

Ro-Li-Ki—President Shirley announced there has been a change in the this year’s Ro-Li-Ki meeting. Members need to be aware this year’s Ro-Li-Ki meeting will occur on THURSDAY, May 24th at 6:00 pm instead of the previously schedule Tuesday date. We will NOT have a morning meeting that week so we can attend the Thursday Ro-Li-Ki meeting. Please make note of this change in your calendars.