Greg Wynn welcomed members and guests to the meeting on May 7, 2024
2024 Scholarship recipient, Anthony Bynum offered the prayer
Social Director Kevin Courtney reported that the recent social - A Night at the Races - raised $300 for the scholarship fund. It was a fun night and the big winners were: #1 Suzi Dixon with $86, #2 Brian Neumann, #3 Pam Mihelic.
Joah Etchells announced that May 18th we will do a trash pick up at the High School campus. Start time is 8:30 am
CART fund - we have contributed $4700 through May
Jon Lundin has unfortunately for us, moved.
Jon has been a member of our club since 2008. He is a Paul Harris Fellow, Paul Harris Society member, and a Major Donor. We will miss his presence at our meetings and wish him the best. He sent some great notes to us which were passed around at the meeting. His new address is: Sunrise Providence, 5144 Providence Rd., Charlotte, NC 28226 Attn: Jon Lundin Apt. 131. Sunrise phone is 704-365-5252 I am sure he would love hearing from y'all.
Bev James introduced our scholarship recipient Anthony Bynum and his mother.
He told us of his plans to study mechanical engineering at Harvard. He thanked VLR for choosing him to receive the scholarship
Mike Waters attended Spring Training in Summerville. At that training the winners of the District 7770 March Membership Madness contest were announced. The big winner was the Rotary club of Mt. Pleasant (by the way, DG Lou Mello's club) with an increase in membership of net +7. Mike brought the third place trophy home to VanLandingham -- we came in with a Net +5. Congratulations and great job, VLR - keep up the good work sharing Rotary with others.
Speaker:
Our own Chris Epps was our speaker.
He is an individual of many talents. He is an architect (has a Masters degree), is a Boat Captain, went to SCAD, and is a Shriner.
We learned lots about the Shriners. They have 22 hospitals that they work with to provide free of cost medical care to children. The closest hospital is in Greenville. 100,000 children per year are helped. Some of the things that are helped are cleft palette, burns and ortho conditions. The patient's family does not even have to fill our insurance claims - the Shriner's cover the costs.
Shriners participate in parades in many fashions (clowns, hill billies, Keystone cops, drifter, etc) and Chris has a vehicle that he rides. He brought that to the meeting --it is the only one authorized to drive on the street. You can see by the picture above, it must look pretty cool and flashy with its lights on.
The meeting ended with Greg Wynn interviewing Jacob Hunt who will be our 2024-2025 Club President. Originally from Ohio, Jacob is married with two girls, 1 and 3 years old. He is a partner and practices Real Estate Law. Great to get to know more about our in-coming president.