| Kiwanis is a global organization of volunteers dedicated to changing the world one child and one community at a time. |
NEWSLETTER Cedar Rapids Downtown Kiwanis Club February 7th, 2007 The meeting was called to order by President Chuck Wehage. 23 Members in attendance. Guests: None Birthdays: Dan Thies Feb. 10 Anniversaries: John Anderson Feb. 1989 (or is that 1889?) Announcements: 1. Janet Blackledge announced the upcoming dinner with the IA-NE District Governor, Dave Hesselmann, on Wednesday, March 14. It will be held at the Clark Alumni House on the 2. The regular Wednesday luncheon meeting that day, March 14, is cancelled and the dinner with the Governor taking its place. There will be a round table meeting at 3. Pancake Henry had tickets, corporate call sheets in hand and asked that all attending pick them up immediately after the meeting. He also passed around a worker sign up sheet. Happy Bucks: I apologize as I was briefly day dreaming during Happy Bucks and forgot to jot down what everyone was happy about, but here’s what I remember: Wehage happy about sunshine; Graeff sympathized with the Cyclones after getting pummeled by Mizzou; Grimm – 2 week trip starts tomorrow; Schweitzer had his last will and testamentary statement misunderstood and lost his beer; Thorpe heading southwest for 6 weeks; Carlson celebrating Nebraska over Bobby Knight’s team – a first; Rhodes was happy about something but I didn’t catch it; and Breitbach was happy the Mizzou basketball team’s GPA was a positive integer. Next week’s program: Beer-tasting party next week. No, actually the speaker is a brewer and will be discussing the finer points of making beer. Kelly Moore volunteered to be the guinea pig taster and taster and taster. Speaker: Kelly introduced Jack Roeder, the GM of the CR Kernels Class A baseball team. Jack gave a great talk. He started as GM in 1991. The big news: the Kernels will be sporting a new logo and uniforms. Jack brought samples: home will be white, road – grey, and batting practice navy blue mesh. The logo is the first major change since the Kernel logo began in 1993. Sales over the holidays hit $11,000+, up from the average of $3500-4000 during this timeframe. He is hoping the Kernels logo will get selected as one of the top 30 minor league logos as then it will get marketed to little league teams across the country, a potentially big boost to sales. Along with the new logo, the club has 38-39 elementary school nights in April/May and is planning a coloring contest and “Name the mascot” contest. However, he did assure us that Mr. Shucks would not be shucked. Rather, they are looking for a partner. Their annual “Hot stove banquet” fundraiser raised over $10,000 for charity. According to Jack, the organization will reach $1 million in cumulative fundraising dollars this year. Ryne Sandberg, former Cub great, is the manager of the Peoria Chiefs. The Kernels have 12 games against them this season, nine of which are in CR. He expects large crowds for those games. The Corridor Journal voted the Kernels the “Best place to entertain” this past year, ahead of the Hawkeye football games. In terms of attendance, the club will surpass the 1,000,000 mark sometime this summer, having averaged 183,000 the past 5 years. He also mentioned that 84 events were held last year that didn’t involve a Kernels game. Over 750,000 people came to some event or used facilities at the sports complex this past year, which includes the stadium, the ice arena, All in all, it was a very interesting talk. Thanks, Jack Word for the day: Don was pressed for time and had practically run out of handy words, so he pulled one off the internet. Unfortunately for Don’s pocketbook, Kevin Carlson was in attendance and had just been on the internet. The word? ducal. Kevin got it right. Definition: of, pertaining to, or characteristic of a duke or dukedom Submitted: Dan Breitbach | |||||||||||
| UPCOMING SPEAKERS |