June 6 Meeting Notes

   

June 6 Meeting Notes

The meeting was called to order at 7 am by President Robin DeRock.

National Yo Yo Day

Guests:

• Becky Cummins - Chapel of the Valley
• Rich Cummins - Chapel of the Valley
• Willard Fields (PUD History Expert - Presenter)

Announcements

Fran Update

• She went camping with some of the other exchange students
• The camp was in the forest near a river
• They went boating, hiking, and swimming

Erin McCool - 1st Paul Harris Award

Apple Sox Opening Night! The season is officially underway!

• Congrats Allie on all of your hard work. Have a great season.

Pride Update 

• Fantastic Event 
• 250 Bands given out from the Rotary Booth
• A list of new friends of Rotary (potential members)

Goathead Warriors - Changed to July

• Julie Banken (new member and Joel's better half) will lead the event
• Volunteers needed
• Julie shared the following about goatheads
• They take about 3 weeks to grow
• They can create between 200 and 5,000 seeds per year
• They can live up to 5 years

Changeover Dinner - June 13th - 5:30pm - $28 per person added to your bill

• Spouses and families welcome
• Bar-B-Que Grill from Sweetwoods
• Please RSVP to make sure the right amount of food can be ready

July 4th and 5th

• Sunrise Rotary volunteers needed for:
• July 4th - Parking and Pie Eating Contest
• July 5th - Clean up the park - The more hands the better

Small Miracles - Alan Walker

• Provides lunch for kids while school is out during the summer
• Volunteers needed throughout the summer
• June 26th thru August 3rd
• Monday thru Thursday - 11am to 12pm
• www.smallmiraclesncw.org/volunteer

Brags and Confessions

Kelly Walker

• She and Alan made the trip to Rochester in 3.5 hours - they took the wings off the car after the trip
• Kelly visited her mom in Rochester

Erik Holmberg

• Erik and his wife traveled to Tuscany to meet with their son who lives in Isreal
• They then went to Cape Town South Africa
• They went on a Safari
• They stayed in 3 camps including one near Victoria Falls
• They Bungie jumped (300 feet)

Alan Walker 

• Bids for the remodel closed on Tuesday
• The project will start ASAP with June 30th open for business target in the new location

New Member Induction

Becky Cummins - Introduced by Kaitlyn (and Kelly)

Becky was born and raised in California, where she loved growing up around the beach and in a small town where they had horses and as many animals as her parents would allow her to rescue. When they moved to the Bay area, she got involved in planning activities for the service men there, which led her to meeting a handsome Navy man, Richard Cummins, who was stationed in Alameda. On their first date, he took her on a little cruise aboard the Aircraft Carrier, USS Coral Sea. How do you top that, well she's happy to say they will be celebrating their 40-year anniversary in October. She's a proud mother of 3 sons and daughter-in-loves, 3 granddaughters and 3 grandsons.

While her children were young, she was a stay-at-home mom and helped her mother in her interior design business. She didn't search out working in funeral business, it found her. She was a Funeral Director in California for over 23 years before moving to Wenatchee last March, where I became the Manager of Chapel of the Valley. She is blessed and honored to continue doing what She loves in ministering to those who walk through their doors. I couldn't imagine doing anything else.

Her joys in life have always been her faith, family, animals, being in nature, especially the beach, heling people, and making gift baskets for many charity fundraisers. She looks forward to continuing getting to know and serve her Wenatchee community. She has already met some amazing people, one of them is Kaitlyn.

Program - Willard Fields - History of Chelan PUD

Willard Fields is one of the most senior members of the Chelan PUD.

Williard worked for the PUD twice. Once for 26 years and then a second time for 20 years. He is the DeFacto historian. 

Willard grew up in Idaho. He graduated from Montana State University in 1976. He immediately went to work for PUD Hydro positions. He has been focused on on Rocky Reach and Rock Island dams. He is an avid AKC member with Papillons. He shows his dogs in agility and obedience classes just to name a couple of events.

Williard covered the history of Hydro in our area beginning in 1898 thru today.

• 1898 to 1901 - Each person was charged a fee and a per lightbulb charge.
• Most homes had one lightbulb in their main room in their house.

• Waterville power was run to their town but it did not work. Then an earthquake happened and afterwards the Waterville power worked. The cause has not been determined.

• The town of Dryden passed the hat to pay for power for Saturday night dances for the town to attend.

• In 1920's and 1930's the building of Rock Island Dam saved the Wenatchee Valley from feeling the full impact of the Depression. It created a lot of jobs and the money from the workers was spent in Wenatchee.

• 1927 to 1928 Chelan was added to the power grid.

• 1930 the PUD was created.

• 1936 the PUD took over for Chelan, Okanogan, and Grant Counties

• 1948 there were 12,000 customers.
• Now there are 53,000 customers in the valley.

• 1948 was the year of record flooding in Wenatchee. There is a mark on a building at the end of 5th in Wenatchee showing how high the water was. It nearly reached Wenatchee Avenue.
• The dams added to the Columbia River have greatly reduced the risk of flooding in our area.

• 1950 to 1951 - The Korean War created a high demand for aluminum. The army Corp of Engineers were going to take over the Rock Island Dam.
• The Dam was built with a capacity for 10 generators, but the PUD only put in 4 to begin with.
• The PUD contacted ALCOA and encouraged them to put a plant in near the dam.
• The PUD got financing for the 6 additional generators from out of town. Ironically those same people that fronted the money for the generators later became customers of the PUD and paid for power that eventually paid off the loans for the generators.
• ALCOA produced the aluminum for the war and the PUD retained ownership of the Rock Island Dam.

• 1954 - The PUD began to sell power to other areas creating the income needed to build additional dams.

• 1961 - Rocky Reach Dam built
• The town of Entiat was affected in a big way.
• They either sold the land to the PUD and moved up higher on the hill, or some took the money and left town.

• 1975 - The PUD officially took full ownership of the Rock Island Dam by selling power out of town.

• 1994 - The PUD stopped purchasing power from out of town and powered all of the local area themselves.

Williard shared that the area only uses about 1% of the power created by the PUD. There is substantial room for the area to increase its power requirements without fear of exceeding capacity.

NOTE: The Army Corps of Engineers work with the PUD and other power companies to determine how much power is required and where it is sent to other parts of the area or other states.

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The raffle was $670. Only 5 marbles in the bag. Alan Walker did not draw the winning marble.

A winner will be determined at the change over dinner Tuesday night, June 13th.

Next programs

• 6/13 - Changeover BBQ at Pybus
• 6/20 - Jeff Kimball - North Central Education Foundation

Rotary Anniversaries

• Kaitlyn Vanweerdhuizen - June 5th - 4 years
• Stacy Gold                       - June 7th - 1 year
• Rebecca Lyons                 - June 21st - 4 years
• Wayne Steele                    - June 28th - 1 year