Stories

The Navajo Solar lights project provides an advanced solar light kit to homes on the Navajo Reservation that do not have electricity.  So far 42 homes have received 126 lights with solar panels, wiring and cell phone charging capabilities.  This was done on three separate installations on Black Mesa, in Monument Valley and at Navajo Mountain/Piute Mesa.  For information on the project, or information on how to donate, please contact our community service committee at the following email address service@durangodaybreakrotary.org.

Click on "more" for Navajo rural living facts!

In June 2013 eight Rotarians from The Rotary Club of Durango Daybreak in District 5470 traveled to Nepal to help install 165 Solar light kits along The Great Himalayan trail in Humla, Nepal for tea house entrepreneurs. This is one of the poorest regions of the trail if not in all of Nepal. The club worked with the Nepal Trust, a Scottish NGO with long standing ties to Rotary, to organize the project. The partner club in Nepal was the Rotary Club Bagmati, Nepal District 3292. Take a tour of the photos by following this link.  Learn what an adventure our trekkers had.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.646166638748017.1073741845.466025163428833&type=1&l=7979a0b564 

 

 

Coke Newell gave a program on the Amigo Project in Colima, Mexico.

Three students from Durango and one from Pagosa participated in a rewarding weekend in Carbondale.

Durango Daybreak recently wrapped and delivered over forty care packages bound for the Navajo Nation.  These packages were all identical in contents having everthing from emery boards to towels.  The recipients are elderly Navajo women who live in the far reaches of the reservation without modern facilities and usually have situations like broken families that do not have the where-with-all to take care of their grandmothers.  A week before Mothers Day, a group of Rotarians delivered these packages to locations on the Reservation.  The Daybreak project was headed by BJ Boucher, and with a lot of assistance from members like Lorretta Helms and Annette Angst.  BJ has had contact with the leader of this project in the Salt Lake City area since its inception in the 1980s or 90s.  As the club became interested in this project we looked to BJ to help it get off the ground.  There is talk of continuing this project next year.

He has come a long way from10 months ago.  Coco was awake and looking lively when he gave his presentation on his two homes, Thailand and Durango. Coco will be leaving on his west coast USA tour.  Make sure you say your good byes.

Ladies from the Victorian Age Society demonstrate Victorian era clothing.

The Daybreak rule for Make-up Meetings:
It's sort of the opposite of the Colorado Sunshine Law that says two elected officials cannot meet together without first making a public announcement about the meeting.  In an inverse rational, some in Durango Daybreak think a make-up is constituted by two or more Rotarians getting together for dinner at the local pub. 

• Exhibit A: Rotarians and spouses along with the District Service Committee Chair Eddie Chung in Phoenix.
• Exhibit B: Past Presidents John Francis and Joe Choquette, PDG BillTarpley, his wife Dorothy, and Joe's wife Nancy Choquette, submitting evidence of their make-up meeting at a Mexican restaurant near Tucson.

Is there a pattern related to the location of the meetings?  Well, at least there's fellowship.

Erik Potter is the newest member of Durango Daybreak.  Erik is transferring from the Evening club.  Say hi to him next time you see him in the meeting.

It was the tenth running of the balls, and what a success it was.  There were three winners. Chris Douly won $5000, Sandy Blaisdell won $2000, and Alanda Martin won $1000.  Unfortunately, no one came up with the correct ball sequence for the potential $25,000 prize that was added for the tenth anniversary celebration.

As usual we had many members from all four La Plata county rotary clubs helping on the hill. Some helped with set up, some helped with ticket sales, and some helped blow up the balls and build the chutes.  Many helps pull it all down, and by 5:00 PM everyone pulled away from DMR with  trailers and trucks loaded.   This project is always a testament to the adage "many hands make light work."

The Ski Race was also a continuing tradition of joking, fixing, and ringers and the joking about the fixing with ringers.  It's all in good fun to get as many people involved as possible.  The Rotary Club of Durango obviously recruited the most ringers and won first place, followed closely by The Rotary Club of Pine River Valley Centennial in second, the Rotary Club of Durango Daybreak third, and the Rotary Club of Durango High Noon did not place.  Go to the photo albums on the Daybreak website to see how the excitement played itself out.  

John and Annette Angst are our newest Daybreak members.  They add to the tradition of couples in our club.  They have already jumped in to the Rotary experience by delivering the Christmas gifts for the students in Juarez..  John and Annette, we're all so glad to have you in our ranks.

Daybreak and Evening Rotary Clubs, in a joint effort, sponsored a Holiday Party for residents of the VOA shelter and Safe House on December 15^th.   Approximately 36 men and women, plus 14 children were invited to the party.  They were served turkey, ham, vegetables, assorted side dishes and desserts, all provided by Rotary members.  Our District Governor Roger Ptolemy opened the party with a speech about Rotary .  We all joined in dinner with people from the shelter and safe house .  Santa Claus made an appearance and distributed gifts to the children.  Each child received gifts valued up to $25.00 from their individual wish lists.  The adults were given $20.00 gift certificates to Walmart and one lucky person won a $50.00 gift certificate donated by Walmart.  Funds for the gift certificates and children’s gifts were provided by Daybreak and Evening Clubs.  Rotary members and Rotaract also assisted in the set for the party and serving dinner.  The residents and their children appreciated the effort of Rotary.  It was said the festivities helped the holiday spirits.

At last week's meeting, Annette and John Angst presented an Onyx Angel to the club from Al and Lil Yturralde for the Daybreak Rotary support to the Juarez Christmas Gift Program.  They also presented a plaque inscribed from Club Rotario Juarez Campestre, our sister club, with thanks for Daybreak's support of the Christmas Gift Project. Thank you Annette and John for delivering all these wonderful gifts to be taken to the 4th and 5th graders in Juarez.  They loved the trip and meeting some wonderful people.  The angel is beautiful and the attachment describes the history of the angel.  Thanks to everyone in the club for supporting this project and bringing it all together through the leadership of Dave McKeever and the International committee.  Much appreciated.  Pres Carol

 

District Governor Roger Ptolemy attended our meeting on December 21st to present a number of new Paul Harris Fellow pins. Carol McGuire received her first Paul Harris Fellow Pin. Daybreak members that were honored as Multiple Paul Harris Fellows were Eddie Chueng +4, (pictured with Roger); Bard Heroy +1; receiving in abstention were Jan Williams +6; Bill Tarpley,+7; Dorothy Tarpley,+3; and Richard Carpenter+1.

After Roger's presentation, our own BJ Boucher presented background on The Adopt-A-Native-Elder Program started through the efforts of BJ's friend Linda Myers in Utah. The program supports over 500 traditional elders who live in the northern portion of Arizona and southern Utah. The activities of the program focus on helping traditional elders live on the land in the traditional ways of The People, as they have for thousands of years. This Program is assisted by traditional Dine' people who serve as coordinators in various parts of the reservation to help determine the needs of the elders in their own culture and lifestyle. This program has no political or religious ties and is a tax exempt NGO. Further information can be researched at the following web address. http://www.anelder.org. Daybreak is exploring the potential of working with this organization to develop a meaningful service project for Daybreak, or our Interact Club.

Daybreak's webmaster Walt Duhaime gave a demonstration of the new Daybreak website.  On this website members can perform many different actions. Members can change their own profile information including the club picture used in our directory.  Here is acopy of the cheat sheet handed out in the meeting.

Address: www.durangodaybreakrotary.org

Your login for the Daybreak website is the same for the District website. Unless you have changed it, the login follows a formula (first initial, last name followed by the numbers 3241) with no spaces.  The password is random unless you have changed it.

Who can help you with a password issue?  You can! On the login page; type your login as described above, click on “I forgot my password” and follow the steps of resetting your password.  It will send a new password to the email address on file with the website.  Walt and Dave S. can help if this process is not working for you.

Current Uses: Our public face, organizes a club bulletin, Calendar, Events, links to RI/District/other places, News about meetings, Finding e-mail addresses, sending e-mail to members, updating your personal information like phone/spouse/birthdate/address/e-mail/directory photo…, check you attendance record, Photo albums, view club documents like board meeting minutes….

Future Uses:  Share work, Archive club history, Center for organizing events and committee work, set up online payment page for fundraising events.

This fall's highway cleanup turned out a record number of participants.  Over twenty people showed up to make the event an easy sweep.  The usual trash was found.  However, the board members present at the time called an impromptu meeting to change the bylaws of the clubs.  "Hence forth: election of the club president will be automatically decreed if a member has been found littering the highway."  Since an advertisement for his company was found on the highway Ultrasteam owner and rotarian Richard Carpenter was elected president for the 2013/2014 Rotary year.  This can only be nullified if a regular election is held in December according to the old bylaws.

Wild Thing is tasked with learning about Rotary.  We don't know exactly what he has learned about the bylaws or matching grants, but he has participated in a lot of Daybreak Rotary fellowship activities. He accompanied rotarians to the Four Corners Folk Festival, he's climbed a fourteener, gone on bike rides with the Saturday morning rotarians riding on the river trail, he's been four wheeling, and he even helped a rotarian through surgery in Singapore after the rotarian broke his hip in Bali.  Most recently he helped deliver gifts to Mexican elementary students in Juarez.  Here he is spotted getting ready for some holiday cheer with his fellow rotarian traveling buddies. You too can have a wild adventure. Check out this You Tube video of Wild Thing serenading as rotarians float down the river.    Crank up the volume, he's a little shy. http://youtu.be/Clee5qRsCFc

This year's firewood project was once again a great success even though our wood supplier was felled:-)  After it was evident that increased demand for wood meant that the wood would not be free Co-Community Service Chairs Hank Hays and Ken Beagles and project champion Chip Huntoon came to the rescue.  They organized a wood purchase and donation drive within the club.  Chip donated his property to stage the wood where a group of Rotarians  split about 15-20 cords. A couple of weeks ahead of delivery Jim Duke and Mike McGuire provided three power wood splitters, and within about 4 hours a group of approximately 15 Rotarians had large piles of split wood all over Chips property.  Then on November 19th the club came together once again and delivered to all of the addresses on our list.  Extra kudos goes out to Hank's wife, Trish Hays, who made delicious gluten free banana nut pancakes for all workers on both splitting and delivery work mornings.  Another great tradition we are developing here.

The Durango Daybreak Western Heritage Days Dance went off without a hitch.  The Music was grand and all who attended got to two step and swing.  Bobby Marquez seems to be an up and coming country and western entertainer.  Many thanks to Joe Williams for his organization efforts.  Bon appetite to Nancy and Joe Choquette as well as Rodney Cross for organizing and preparing the food.  We are in debt to Jan Williams for organizing all the volunteers.  BJ Boucher and Beth McMaken deserve praise for their PR leadership. Kudos for the Elks lodge to opening there doors to another service organization. And job well done with the rest of the club membership who were able to step up and either perform random preparation tasks or volunteered many hours at the event.

The Strater Hotel was the host site for the first annual Rotary community open house!  On February 23rd, the four Rotary clubs of La Plata County hosted an open invitation to community leaders and business persons to come as guests of Rotary to see the world of Rotarians.

Just over 60 guests signed in and mingled with their Rotary hosts and other interested folks from around the county.  Appetizers and a cash bar opened up the evening and each of the four clubs spoke of their clubs, their projects and interests in support of community and international projects.

Assistant Governor Clyde Church opened the gala with an overview of Rotary and its history in our community.  Foundation Chairman Joe Williams told the attendees about the Rotary Foundation and drew applause with the story of polio eradication and how we are chasing down the "Final Inch" in Rotary's sustained efforts to lead the efforts to eradicate this scourge.

In follow up reports, it is being reported that commitments to join us in our efforts to do good in the world are in the works.

 

To join Rotary in our community, please contact one of our four clubs. 

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