Wagner Rotary Club Members were welcomed to the September 19th meeting at 12:00 Noon with a jarring ringing of the bell by President Jerry Weber. Rotarian Laurie Kidd led the members in prayer giving thanks for the beautiful rain, asking for blessings upon all those suffering from the flooding in North Carolina, and a special blessing for the WCS Senior students who were visiting.

Senior students introduced themselves and they were: Joanna Soukup, parents Kim and Lynn Soukup; Ihanktonwan Bair, parents Frances Zephier and Robin Bair; Britney Krcil, parents Steve and Karen Krcil; and Aneissa Olson, guardians Christel and Jody Zephier.

The Membership Minute was given by Rotarian Dave Isebrands. The material was taken from the EClub One Rotary Web-based makeup site. The title was: Rotary wins Best Nonprofit Act for its polio eradication work. Rotary’s commitment to eradicating polio worldwide won Best Nonprofit Act in the Hero Awards of the One Billion Acts of Peace campaign, an international global citizens’ movement to tackle the world’s most important issues.

The campaign is an initiative of Peace Jam Foundation and is led by 14 Novel Peace Prize laureates, including the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, and Rigoberta Menchu’Tum, with the ambitious goal of inspiring a billion acts of peach by 2020. Each year, the campaign picks two finalists in each of six categories for their work to make a measurable impact in one of the 10 areas considered most important by the Nobel laureates. Winners are chosen by people from around the world.

Rotary and Mercy Corps were the two finalists in the Best Nonprofit Act category. Rotary and the five other winners will be recognized at a ceremony in June in Monaco. Betty Williams, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977 for her advocacy for peace in Northern Ireland, will present the award.

Rotarian Kidd announced the Rotary Song for the day would be “Roll Rotary” and asked everyone to give their all to impress the Senior students with our singing. (Check the fines list to see how that went).

Gerrit Juffer drew the lucky ticket and tried to pull the Queen from the deck of only 8 cards but he came up short with the 10 of Clubs. $15.00 was collected for the drawing which brings the total to $898.00 to be won by some lucky Rotarian in the weeks ahead.

Rotarian Patty announced that the Henke Team had only 1 miss today and the Frei Team had 3 misses today. The totals stand at 15 misses for Henke and 15 misses for the Frei Team.

Rotarian Brunsing announced the winners for the Monday night football game were Marilee Krcil sold by Brunsing herself, and Roger Saylor sold by Jerry Henke. She also gave the program chairmen for the coming weeks to be Gerrit Juffer on the 26th, Kelsey Doom on October 3rd, and Brenda Jaton on October 10th

President Jerry reminded members that the Rotary District 5610 annual convention is September 28th and 29th in Vermillion. He also asked members to help load up the aluminum cans for transportation to the recycling center in Mitchell as soon as the meeting was adjourned.

Rotarian Francis Doom gave his program from his perspective as a former District Governor of District 5610. He feels that our district has slowing drifted away from the principles that formed the Rotary organization. He listed many of the regulations that District Governors have failed to observe or totally neglected over the last 25 years since he held the District office.

Put life into Rotary—Your Life--- was the motto many years ago. He quoted many of the Mandatory Projects and Committees that were in force back in the day. His presentation was given as a matter of information and in a positive thought-provoking manner. A lively discussion followed with members giving suggestions and a consensus was that we need to give this matter a great deal of thought in the days and weeks to come.