Weekly Updates from President Wertzberger

My Fellow Rotarian;

Good afternoon!  Today feels like a warm wet day in April but we still need the moisture so it’s all good.

What a great time we had at Farrar Manufacturing!   We were treated to snacks and drinks prior to hearing from Joe about the history of his company and then being led by his staff for guided tours.  Two things I took from the tour:  (a) Farrar Manufacturing was originally a blacksmith shop founded by Joe’s grandfather and (b) there is no foundry in Manhattan.   That is at their plant in Norwich Kansas.  Oh and they work primarily with doctile iron.  Farrar manufacturing’s website to learn more is www.farrarusa.com. 

At our meeting last Thursday Keith Westervelt hinted that our next social outing will be the new facilities of Farm Credit.  Stay tuned!

The date of our meeting last week is an important date for Rotary as we celebrated World Polio Day.  We are so close to eliminating this terrible disease yet we cannot do it without your financial support to Rotary International.  I appreciate this club’s continued generosity.

At last Thursdays meeting we enjoyed listening to Betty Stevens give our Rotary Inspiration and her message was appropriate with our RYLA students in attendance.

It was indeed a pleasure then to hear from our four RYLA high school students on their experience at the RYLA camp held at the KU campus.  Their enthusiasm is contagious!  Thank you to Larie Schoap and her committee for the work selecting our award recipients and following through for their experience at camp.

I then turned the podium over to Don Boggs who introduced our guest speaker Dale Rodman, the Secretary of Agriculture for the State of Kansas.   Dale gave us an overview of what the Department of Agriculture is responsible for in the state and remarked that the department touches each Kansan in some way.  He concluded with discussing the new facility being built here in Manhattan that will be ready next year.

This coming Thursday our guest speaker will be our own Gary Clark interim dean for the College of Engineering at KSU.  He will be giving us information on the new building expansion for the College of Engineering.

Finally I appreciate the tremendous feedback from you on this weekly e-mail but we do have a great website where you can get so much more information on speakers, minutes of our board meeting, duty assignments for greeters, directory of your fellow Rotarians and links to so much more.   We encourage you to make it one of your favorites.  We host our site through clubrunner and there is a cost to maintain the website.  Thanks to those Rotarians for buying ads on the site to help defer costs.  Please support them and if you have an interest in doing an ad see George Ham, Vernon Turner or any board member.

See you all for lunch Thursday!

Dick

Dick Wertzberger

President

Manhattan Rotary 2013-14

Engage Rotary  Change Lives!