July 1, 1954- June 30 1955
President: Len Wooton
Vice Pres: Leslie Lewis
Secretary: Ralph Wood
Apple Seed: Ralph Wood District Governor: Jepp Jeppson
Attendance: 94.81%
New Members: 15
Members Lost: 12
Members end of the year: 146
Although this report covers only the first two-thirds of our Club year and ends February 28, 1955, it does complete the first 34 calendar years of our club's history and takes us through February 23, 1955, the 50th anniversary of Rotary International.
On July 15 the District Governor appointed our member Ed Smith, Past District Governor, to the District Advisory Committee. The Wenatchee Club, for the second year, became a 100% club, contributing an average of $10.00 per member, in its giving to the Rotary Scholarship Foundation Fund. The District Governor also selected our Club as host for the District Extension Institute on August 28th. Meetings of the District Finance and Advisory Committee were also held here. The Institute was conducted by Rotary International's Extension Counselor, Dolph Browne. The Governor made his official visit to the Club the last week in August and reported on what Rotary is doing around the World and in our district. He summed up his talk with "When all is said and done, the individual Rotarian is the important Cog in Rotary." The first new club in the district for the year was Fruitvale, B. C., chartered as the 46th club of District 153.
In recognition of Rotary's Golden Anniversary, an Anniversary Committee was selected with Fred Crollard, Sr. as chairman. The committee's project was to write up a brief history of the activities of the club since its inception 34 years ago. This project took a lot of work with Fred appointing 34 Rotarians each to be responsible for an individual club year and to write up the highlights of that year. All the available club records had to be reviewed and separated into individual years, a project which was done by Honorary Member, O. B. Shay. Unfortunately much club history has been lost with several of the 34 Rotarians reporting no Apple Seeds or club bulletins available for the year assigned to them.
Our meeting of February 24 was an evening meeting with Rotary Anns celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Rotary. Fred Crollard was chairman and Leo Lowe, master of ceremonies. guest Speaker was J. W. "Jim" Woolford of Seattle, District Governor of District 151 in 1950-51. He talked about the 50 years of Rotary. Ladies of Rotary were in charge of table decorations. Mesdames Jesse Widby, Stan Ernest, Dick Barber, Rollie Day and Jim Welch being principally responsible and doing a beautiful job. Ken Warner and his orchestra provided the music. The party was a grand success.
This year the Club and Wenatchee Rotary Foundation sponsored two Wenatchee High School boys to Boys' State. One of the most noteworthy undertakings was to sponsor a Scout Troop for handicapped children to Scout A Vista. This Troop was organized last year by the Crippled Children's Committee, Claire Vandivort as Chairman. It is now being directed by Rotarian, Dr. Warren Kraft.
Some of our finest programs were vocational talks of our members including that made by Fred Nancekivell on his classification of Cleaning and Pressing which included fabrics prior to the new ones now in use. On February 10 the Club was scheduled to hear two classification talks, one from Stub Peterson, classification Dry Cleaning, and Bob McDougall, Pear Grawing. Stub led off first and his talk was so interesting that he was given the full time. Bob was given a rain-check to give his talk later.
January 13th speaker was Dr. Kretzler, State Commander of American Legion, speaking on activities of the Legion and particularly about their "Boys' State" program, to which our club has been sending a boy each year, and this year two. On January 20th we had a joint meeting with Cashmere Rotarians and Grangers at the Beacon Hill Grange Hall. The speaker was Paul Lancaster of Yakima who spoke on "New Methods of Storage and Packing," of particular interest to all apple growers present. On February 3rd, George Shields, Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company, gave a most interesting talk and demonstration about some of the new inventions and developments that make our telephone service function as smoothly as it does. On February 17th our program was Dr. Norman Gregory, University of Washington, who gave an interesting talk on "Chemistry and our Future."
In mid-January two of our members received awards at the annual Boy Scout Banquet: Archie Van Doren the Silver Beaver Award, Scout's highest council award, and Jim Wallace received a special award for service. Rotarian Jim Starr made the presentation speech for the Silver Beaver Award. Present Rotarians, in addition to Archie, who hold the Silver Beaver Award are: Ralph Wood, Bill Elder, "Shine" Shiner, Ed Smith, Paul Scea, Chris Bagdon and Clyde Merchant.
A major project of the year was developing the Growth of Membership Report and attendance percentages. Fortunately Secretary Ralph had all the original work sheets the various secretaries had kept on individual members and for each club meeting beginning with the Club's fifth year, and, from these, was able to do the report and the graphs.