Posted by Dene Hadden on Oct 01, 2019
SPOKES VOL. LXVI NO. 12                                                                               October 1, 2019
 
 
We were greeted by Jean Stein and Tom Rummel
 
President Odland opened the meeting with “God Bless America” and Art Ayers provided the invocation.
 
Guests:
 
Our Guests this morning included Kate Hosier, our speaker.
 
Getting to Know You: Kaileigh Eddy
 
Kaileigh, one of our newest members, grew up in the Delton area and attended Thornapple-Kellogg High School.  She attended WMU and earned a degree in accounting/psychology.  She met her husband Mark in Kalamazoo and they both worked in the Kalamazoo –Parchment area for a number of years.  They moved here in 2000 where Mark was hired as a social studies teacher by a fellow Rotarian.  Mark was part of the football staff at South Haven before a time as head football coach in Coloma.  He has returned to SH and is the new varsity football coach here.  Kaileigh worked in Holland before joining DeBoer and Bauman accounting firm here in South Haven.  She has been a church children’s group leader and cheer coach at several levels.  Her strength comes from her strong belief in her religion and the faith she has.  They have four children; Opal a senior at SHHS, Alexis a sophomore at SHHS and twins – a boy and a girl – in 7th grade. 
 
Announcements:
  • Haven Harvest is scheduled for Saturday October 19.  A sign-up sheet is being passed around.  We will be serving food and drink!
  • Member Tom Renner was deservedly featured in a recent issue of the Herald-Palladium for his service and photography in our community.  Thanks Tom!!
  • We are pleased to announce the Al Ruppert is the winner of our Rotary District “Golden Trowel” award for his service to our community.
  • November 21st is our Chamber ABO at the Moose Lodge with the Moose.  Volunteers needed.
  • December 10th is our Holiday Party at the Yacht Club
  • December 21st is the Open Door Dinner at the Methodist Church
  • December 21st is our day to do the Salvation Army Bell Ringing
  • Blessings in a Backback will begin on October 11th at 1:15 at Lincoln School
  • We also got a note from prospective member Mike Libovich noting how impressed he was with our group and that he looked forward to becoming a member.
Songs
 
Jim Davis was our song leader and led us in two songs that will fade into the shade as we slowly rework our song list.The first, “In the Shade of the Old Oak Tree” was written in 1905 and is beginning to show its age.We followed that with “Mary’s a Grand Old Name” by George Cohan written in 1906.We finished with “When the Saints Come Marching in”, Rotary style.
 
50/50
 
Bill Roberts had the lucky ticket but drew the unlucky 7.  President Odland more than doubled his salary aa president, winning $2.
 
 
Fines:
  • Deb Davidson is celebrating her 22nd anniversary to her husband John this week
  • The basket was passed around to allow more time for our speaker.
Bill Roberts introduced South Haven City Assistant Manager Kate Hosier
 
Kate, a graduate of South Haven High School, MSU and the Thomas Cooley Law School, served several years as a defense attorney before accepting the position of Assistant City Manager here.  The job includes being Harbor Master and several other assignments.
 
Kate presented a brief outline of what has been happening in and to our harbor over the past year.  The harbor, which includes over 1200 boat slips with about 220 being municipal slips in four different marinas, underwent several upgrades.
 
State grants are important to the financial health of the city and getting those grants requires keeping the marinas full and providing services to boaters.  One of the newer services is the addition of a number of “dingy docks” at various places along the river to allow boaters to use the river as a means of transportation up and down the waterway.
 
Kate also outline and showed pictures of the upgrades completed recently which included new roofs, repairing walls, updating the electrical systems to make sure they are safe, especially in this period of high water, much landscaping and the addition of a state of the art fish cleaning station.
 
The harbor is under the jurisdiction of a seven member Harbor Commission.
 
President Odland presented Kate one of our speaker’s pens and thanked her for her interesting and informative presentation.
 
We closed the meeting with the Four Way Test.
 
Next week’s program: Don Dobbins
 
Greeters:  Bill Roberts and Tom Renner
 
Editarian:  Dene Hadden