December 9, 2006:
Twenty-two Odd Fellows helped this morning to make the "Breakfast
with Santa" a great success. Thank you to each and every one of you.
As Kathy White remarked to me as we were cleaning up, surrounded by
hard-working Odd Fellows, "The success of this organization shows
because everyone is here doing clean up." Folks were there from
beginning to end. No one made a guest appearance - everyone worked.
Indeed, all of you put in many hours of work. Some of you also brought
children and friends and relatives to help and so we had plenty of
volunteers. The event flowed very smoothly.
A special thank you to Lea Rosenberg, who chaired this event, and to
her hard-working Community Support Committee: Barbara Geisler, Roz
Pascoe, Donna Provenza, Holly Bishop and Joyce Puntillo, who not only
planned the event, had many meetings to pull it off, but set up Friday
night, and worked long hours from 6 a.m. this morning till clean-up was
completed after lunch. The Goodie Bags, the many donations of
sponsorships and products, the individual place-mats for the kids, the
crayons on the tables, the photo opportunities with the Guest of Honor
(Santa) - all showed a great deal of foresight and planning by the
committee. I think next year (other than a little tweaking here and
there) we do almost exactly what we did this year - let's not mess with
success. Special thanks to Barbara and John Geisler who allowed us to
use the DWR community room and supplied us virtually everything we needed.
I heard many, many comments from the 300 guests (three seatings) who
were delighted with the event and said it was the "best-ever Breakfast
with Santa". Every one of you rolled up your sleeves to help mix
batter, cook, serve, set up, take tickets, make coffee, organize the
photo line, clean up, take down and do everything that needs to be done
to make an event a success. There were a lot of happy children and
parents and grandparents today. And best of all, we will be able to
donate a substantial sum of money to the MDIC, our recipient of funds in
2006. This year IOOF took over the event; next year we will do it in
our own Lodge Hall, even bigger and better.
And as an extra added attraction, I have the names of four very nice
folks who attended the breakfast this morning and are interested in
learning more about IOOF and, perhaps, becoming Odd Fellows themselves.
Isn't that interesting.
Again, thank you Odd Fellows - you are living the credo of this
organization.
Best,
Dave Rosenberg
Acting Noble Grand
Noble Grand-elect 2007
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