February 2025
Dear Fellow Ruritans,
This is the first in a series of newsletters that I plan to send to all club members this year, to keep all of you up-to-date about meeting dates, agendas, fundraisers and plans for our club. Although I am a relatively-new club member, I have chaired other groups during my professional career and I am anxious to restore our club to the "glory days" when our clubhouse was full of members excited about spreading the Goodwill, Fellowship and Community Service that Ruritan is known for.
Our February meeting will be held on Thursday, February 20th at 7:00 P.M. in the clubhouse. Our cooking committee has planned a delicious meal of salad, lasagna and some special desserts. Since this is Valentine's Month, I urge you to bring your special Valentine to join us at the meeting (at no cost). We have a special prize that will be presented to the best "Ruritan Sweethearts" who are at the meeting. We have some special entertainment planned for the evening and I'm sure that you will love it! If you plan to attend and bring a guest, please let me know by February 10th so that we have enough food for everyone.
I want to make our meetings FUN and I plan to implement a few incentives to increase attendance. First, I am reimplementing the "Silver Dollar Handshake" where a member can win money simply by coming early to fellowship with the other members. A "secret" appointed member (changes each month) will be directed to mingle around the clubhouse and shake hands with members. The winner might be the fifth, tenth or twentieth person who shakes the hand of the secret member. This is a good way to mix and mingle and get to know each other better. Second, I am implementing a 50/50 raffle. Anyone who buys a raffle ticket is eligible to win 50% of the money that is collected from raffle ticket sales. The remainder will revert to the club treasury to buy raffle gifts. Third, one of the final things that we will do before adjourning each monthly meeting is to have a membership raffle for a small gift. The only condition to be eligible to win is that you MUST be present at the end of the meeting when the drawing is held.
Don't forget about our first fundraiser of the year, our famous fried chicken dinner. Chairman George Decker has been working hard on this, and he needs the help of ALL club members to make it successful. George has posters available for you to take and post in local businesses. Tickets have been distributed. If you sell all of the tickets that George gave you, please ask for more. The more dinners we sell, the more money we can raise for our community service projects. Fried Chicken Day is an "all hands" effort. We need all members to come out and help set up, cook, serve, and clean up at the end of the day. Sponsorship opportunities are available for the chicken dinner. Individuals or businesses who contribute $100 will have their names printed on a flyer that will be distributed with each dinner. It is a tax-deductible advertising expense for a business. Please encourage businesses that you deal with to consider sponsoring our dinner. Income from the ads will go directly to paying for the expenses associated with producing the dinner (food, cooking oil, paper goods, flatware, etc.).
Thank you for allowing me to have the honor of being president of this club. It is an honor that I take very seriously. I was at the Ruritan National Convention last month and I had the pleasure of meeting new Ruritan friends from across the country. We shared ideas, attended workshops and I plan to implement many of the suggestions that were made. Deep Creek is one of the best clubs in Ruritan National and I hope that you will get excited with me and spread the good news about our club. We have a lot of empty spaces to fill at our tables. More people make light work! Please come to our meetings. Please invite a friend to come with you. Let's have fun this year and let's make the Deep Creek Ruritan Club the best club in the country!