President Bill Frei presided over the October 30th meeting of the Wagner Rotary Club. He called upon Pastor Bill Heermann to offer up a prayer. Pastor Bill gave thanks for the day and remembered former Wagner Rotary member Ed Staudenmier and his family. Ed was a resident and businessman in Wagner for many years and enjoyed his Rotary membership. Ed will be missed by all who knew him.

In the absence of the Membership Minute presenters, Patty Frei gave a presentation on What is Rotary?

Rotary is a worldwide organization. Rotary is where neighbors, friends, and problem-solvers share ideas, join leaders, and take action to create lasting change. Rotarians benefit from personal growth and development, quality friendships, leadership development and the opportunity to give back to society.

Fast facts: We meet every Wednesday at noon here in our Rotary Club Room. Currently we have 25 active members, two of which are past District Governors.

Rotary is a service club organization with more than 1.2 million members over 35,000 clubs worldwide. Rotary club members are volunteers who work locally, regionally, and internationally to combat hunger, improve health and sanitation, provide education and job training, promote peace and eradicate polio under the motto “Service Above Self.”

Wagner Rotary Club’s most visual projects have included the Wagner Lake Rotary Shelter, Aluminum Can Recycling, and Scholarships for High School Seniors. We also provide service for other smaller projects in Wagner and currently are working on our grant to install a sun/shade shelter for spectators at the Pee Wee and Midget baseball field in the Spring 2020.

We were without Song Leaders or piano accompaniment but sang America the Beautiful and did a decent job of it!

This was our first meeting with Seniors from the Class of 2020 attending. We will be entertaining WCS Seniors every week until they have all attended our club for at least one meeting. The Seniors are asked to introduce themselves, inform us of their parent’s name(s), and mention what courses and activities they participate in as well as their possible plans after graduation. Attending today's meeting was Danielle Twiss, parents Hope and Willard Bruguier Jr., Preston Nedved, parents Ross Cimpl and Lindsey Nedved; Isabella Lebeaux, parents Jerome LeBeaux and Amia Moore; KJ St. Pierre, parents Kenny St. Pierre and Leslie Hamilton.

Sgt. At Arms Becky Brunsing announced the football book winners were Katelyn Caldwell sold by Dave Isebrands, and Adam Stedronsky sold by Joe Stedronsky.

Dani Twiss was asked to draw a ticket from the Queen of Hearts drawing and Scott McAdaragh held the winning numbers but came up short only pulling a 7 of spades from the deck of cards.

Sec./Treas. Patty Frei had bad news for the Laurie Kidd attendance team with 8 absences for the day and Bill Heermanns team only had 1 absence leaving Bill's total at 1 and Laurie’s at 8.

Rotarian Craig Krsnak reminded everyone of the meal being prepared at the Wagner Theater tomorrow evening for parents and their children out trick and treating. Donations of cash, labor, or food should be directed to Dana Sanderson.

President Bill reminded everyone that there would be coffee and cookies at the Rotary Building at 3:30 this afternoon for the Australian Exchange group that would like to meet with anyone interested in Aboriginal/Native American topics to discuss. Bill thanked Laura Wright for organizing and informing interested parties of the meeting.

Kathe Henke introduced her program for the day as Dave Andrews, a resident of the Wagner area. His wife is Deb Andrews, the former Deb Durham. Dave was an excellent speaker and he mentioned that he had taken training as a professional speaker which was quite apparent. He stated that anytime one speaks you want to have some common knowledge of experience with the event or persons involved. He drew his knowledge of experience with Rotarians from the Membership Minute given by Patty Frei in which it was mentioned that Rotary is a service organization with a strong sense of duty and service to the community.

Dave spent about 30 years in service to our country’s military advancing up thru the ranks. He retired but soon found himself working for Boeing and discovered he had a gift of being able to memorize all kinds of aircraft mechanizations. He gradually rose up through the ranks at Boeing and was invited to apply for a position with the Presidential Aircraft Fleet at the AFB in Maryland. This involved a great deal of investigation into his personal life and background throughout his entire lifetime.

He was accepted into the program and eventually even had access to the President and his family. All in all, he estimated that the military had spent close to a million dollars for all his training. Dave admits to becoming proud of himself and his accomplishments. One day his superior officer stopped him in the hallway and asked him to please get coffee and utensils ready for a scheduled meeting. Dave said yes but was incensed that he was asked to perform such a menial duty for a man in his position.

Dave is also an avid reader and he began to read books about people throughout history. One of the stories he read was about a Chaplain in the Vietnam war. He relayed a story about a unit of men who became surrounded by the Vietnamese and knew they were in trouble. There were 2600 troops against their unit of about 27 men. They radioed for help and immediately began to be assaulted by the enemy.

He explained that this Chaplain was not required to follow men in uniform to battle. However, as the men began falling one by one the Chaplain chose to rush out to help a soldier who was critically injured. Another soldier followed out to help the Chaplain, but of course he was shot and killed as well as the Chaplain.

As Dave read of this Chaplains courage and service in the face of impending death, he thought back to the day that he was so upset about having to fetch coffee and cups for a meeting. He was embarrassed and sorry about his attitude. It was a very poignant story and a lesson for all to keep in mind. We all need the courage, the morality, the sense of duty and honor to help everyone we meet.

If you contact Dave, we are sure he would be happy to direct you to the source of this story if you wish to read it in detail.

The club adjourned in its usual fashion by singing America.

Sergeant at Arms Becky Brunsing levied the following fines:

• $2 to Jeff Doom for an incident involving backing up a vehicle

• $3 to Jorden Weber for winning the first round of a Voice Contest

• $2 to Rachel Woods for not getting Bill tickets to the SDSU/ NDSU football game

• Preston Nedved $2 for having such long hair but assigned the fine to Bill Frei

• KJ for getting into the National Guard and getting his hair cut $2 assigned to Craig Krsnak

• $3 to Jamie Soukup for his milo yield recently

• $2 Happy Fine paid by Jerry Weber for Jeff Doom not landing on his tractor in the field