This morning, at our weekly Kiwanis meeting, we recognized 17 of 21 recent scholarship recipients. They joined 27 of our members, to accept awards of $1,000 (technical school) and $1750 (four year traditional school) each. With their guests, we fed 57 people a wonderful meal prepared by the Longboat Key Club and served at The Grille, where we meet every Thursday of the world except Thanksgiving. I filmed the crowd, as we stood in anticipation of our opening with remarks by this year's President, Bob Gault. Next October, it'll be my turn in the barrel as they say.
Kiwanis has been part of my retirement life since 2004, and a source of meeting many great people on our island. The club has 51 or 52 members (you'd think I'd know, being the current secretary) of which half are "snow-birds" and live here primarily for only four or five months.
We squeeze a lot of activities into those four or five months, from November through March, and then go back to falling asleep into our oatmeal bowl for the rest of the year. OK, not that bad, but clearly we need to get more full time members enrolled. To be certain, we all seem to enjoy each other's company, sing songs, play games of chance to benefit charities, and talk about our grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
The pictures above (which I've never figured out how to "center" on blogger) are of Jim Burmeister, who will follow me in October of 2012 as President. He's seen getting an omelet prepared - food was wonderful, as usual. The fellow with the small child (a winner's 2 year old) playing hide and seek is Bob Gault - this years President with only five more meetings to run.
The other handsome fellow is Weldon Frost, who led the group who evaluated over 50 applicants to find 21 most deserving. Next year we hope to help more.
All the recipients came up, spoke a bit about their lives and more important their educational dreams. A great morning for them, and a very satisfying experience for our members present.
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