Officers

President
Christine Semon

Pres Elect
Phil Pople

Vice President
Dave Maloney

Secretary
Rob Summers

Treasurer
Ellis Stroup

Immediate Past
President
Ken Dell 

Directors

2005-2007
Larry Fellows
Charlie Mertz
Ed Crawford

2006-2008
Leslie Bruchey
Ken Dell
Eric Gatrell
Jim Wiggins

Click here for District-wide Calendar of Events

Read the Capital District's online eBuilder

Oct 5 - Christine's Crazies- Board Meeting

Oct 12 - Barb Maloney - FISH! Philosophy

Oct 19 - Tom Moran, Maaco Collision Repair and Auto Painting: Autobody Repair slide presentaion; also new member inductions

Oct 26 - Division Council Meeting

Christine's Connections by Pres. Christine Semon

Welcome to a new year Suburban Frederick!! I am humbled and honored to serve as your president for a second term! It should be a great year!

First, let’s review our month. We were honored to have our own member Eric Gatrell (upper right) speak to us about the local real estate appraisal industry. He offered some great tips and funny stories, from his vast experiences in this area. However, please remember to keep those snakes away from Eric!!

On September 23rd, we had the long awaited for and very well organized Silent Auction to benefit Special Inspirations, Inc (see below article.) Hats off to all those in the club who helped out, and especially our President Elect and Fundraising Chair Phil Pople for all of his time and efforts! Thanks to all who donated items to be auctioned off and contributions (especially the Mount Airy Kiwanis Club and Bud Jackson for their very generous donations!) I believe we raised about $5400 for Special Inspirations benefit! Great job to everyone!

September is also a time for our Leadership Service Programs (formally known as "Sponsored Youth") to get up and running for the school year. The club touched base with each of our programs. Several club members went to Mount Saint Mary’s University to help with their annual cook out, as we have done in the past. Thanks to Phil, Jim, and Paul, and Dave for donating your time and cooking skills to this event!

I spoke with the advisor at Middletown Middle School Builders Club, Linda Caron, and they had their first club meeting the last week of September. She is looking forward to another great year, and we hope to participate more with them also. I visited Walkersville High School Key Club at one of their meetings. The advisor, Michelle Roberts, and the club is getting into full swing and are very excited for this year! As most of you know, Von Mosser has transferred from Tuscarora High School to Thurmont Middle School, since it is much closer to his home in PA, so we needed to find new advisors for the new Tuscarora Key Club. Key Club President Leslie Gee was able to talk two teachers into the role of co-advising, and I met with them earlier in the month. I gave them the ’scoop’ about Suburban Frederick Kiwanis and Key Club and the whole Kiwanis Family. They seemed very excited and are looking forward to a good year. I also put invitations out to all clubs to visit us anytime they wanted to.

As Zone Administrator for Key Club divisions 9 and 19, I had a few extra visits on my agenda this month. I attended the Kiwanis Family weekend in Front Royal, VA. We were in the cabins at a YMCA camp with the Governors and Lieutenant Governors of Kiwanis, Circle K and Key Club for leadership and team building activities. We had lot of fun and little sleep! I also attended the joint Key Club (Division 9 and 12) Officer Training Course in a park in Westminster on a rainy, windy Sunday afternoon. The LTG’s did a great job training their incoming officers and brainstorming about divisional projects to work on this year!

On September 28th, several guests honored us with their attendance at our club's installation of Officers and Board of Directors. LTG Jim Jacobs (with 2 days left in his term) and his lovely wife Beth from the Mount Airy Kiwanis Club visited us. Jim offered his thanks to our club for a great year. LTG-Designate (also for 2 more days) from the Greater Westminster Kiwanis Club visited us and conducted the Installation ceremony. Also, I has a had special guest of mine attend. My father Bob Bartolo, from Columbia, MD, visited with us for the event. I was very proud to share this celebration with my father and everyone that attended got to see our sensitive side, with a few tears—as it is definitely a family thing!

Again I would like to offer a special thanks, from the bottom of my heart, to last years Officers, Board members, Chairman and most of all the members of our club. With out you we could not have had such a great year!! We also added two new members during the last few months of the year. Welcome again to Terry Proescholdt and Debbi Matthews! We are looking forward to getting to know you better and getting you as involved as you would like to be!

For our upcoming year, let’s keep up the momentum! We all know we need to continue to strengthen our membership in order to continue doing all we do in our community. Frank Parker has some great ideas and I hope we all keep up the conversations with friends, acquaintances in the community about membership. We all know what is at stake here, so enough said on this topic.

How about we keep things simple and go back to the basics this year?? I recently read parts of a book by Tom Asacker called ‘Sandbox Wisdom’. I thought a few of his suggestions were very appropriate for our club (and possibly our lives): 1) Have Fun, Laughter and Enthusiasm. Basically this one means to strive to keep the childlike spirit at work and play and try not to take you (or life) too seriously if possible. 2) No Limit Thinking. Children often believe they can be and do anything they want. As adults, we tend to build fences around those old dreams and forget about them. Maybe we could work on breaking some of the fences down and start dreaming more?? 3.) Real people and real situations. Instead of looking on the surface or outside appearances, try to look and find out about the core of a person to find who they really are. As they say, “labeling is disabling.” Let’s rekindle attitudes, re- ignite passions and creativity in our club and lives this year by practicing some of the Sandbox Wisdom!

There is a Chinese proverb about Imagination that states: “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities. In the expert’s mind, there are few.” This year, lets’ continue to do what we do best at the Kiwanis Club of Suburban Frederick, as we are a global organization of volunteers dedicated to changing the world one child and one community at a time.