Rotary Club of Wooster, Ohio

Wooster Parade of Flags

Help create a community of red, white, and blue! Be one of the first to participate… make a neighborhood statement and join with others on your street to create a corridor of flags.

Your Wooster Rotary Club, assisted by local youth groups, will place a 3’x 5’ flag in your front yard for 5 holiday weekends per year, and pick it up again after the weekend. A plastic pipe will be buried in your front lawn permanently, flush with the ground, to hold the flagstaff. A plastic cap will cover the pipe when not in use. The City of Wooster has approved the flag to be placed on “tree lawns” where available. The flag and staff will remain the property of the Wooster Rotary Club.

All profits will support community, national, and international Rotary projects and the local youth groups will receive $5.00 of each $25.00 fee. For $25.00 per calendar year, Rotary will provide and install the pipe and cap, provide the flag, store it properly when not in use, and deliver and pick up the flag for the following weekends:

Joint Club Event

Over the past few months, representatives of the Wooster Rotary Club have been meeting with representatives of the Wooster Kiwanis Club and the Noon Lions Club to see if they could develop an annual combined project for the betterment of the Wooster community.

Everyone was in favor of such a program, and we have developed a plan that we will be rolling out in detail over the next few weeks, but the essentials are these:

• To be sure that we have looked at all potential opportunities, we are going public and asking for suggestions from all interested parties through an application process. The application will be on all three club web sites.
• We will be supported by the Daily Record (thanks to Lance White) and Clear Picture in getting the word out.
• The deadline for the applications is July 31, after which a panel of judges – made up of the three club presidents – will select the top three projects by mid-August.
• The top three projects will be invited to make a presentation to the judges’ panel in late August. Daily Record & Clear Picture will be invited to cover.
• The general public will be invited to vote for the winning project at the Daily Record booth at the Wayne County Fair (Sept. 12 – 17)
• The winning project will be announced at a joint club assembly in early October. Robb Hyde (Wayne Center for the Arts) is working with us to develop a program for the assembly.

The committee reviewed forty-five applications for the ten scholarships, and members were genuinely impressed by the talents and accomplishments of all of the students. This
year’s recipients were:

• Cierra Norris, Sam Shapiro Scholarship
• Sonia Masih, LeRoy and Helen Adams Scholarship
• Tracy Clyde, Bill Patterson Scholarship
• Caitlin Martin, W. Lee Culp Scholarship
• Gina Pattison, Rotary Scholarship
• Elizabeth Ann Ferguson, Rotary Scholarship
• Logan Carstensen, Rotary Scholarship
• Catherine Shaw, Rotary Scholarship
• Danielle R. Morris, Rotary General and Art Scholarships

2008-09 Outbound Students

Meet Wooster Rotary's 2008-09 outbound exchange students. From left to right:

Clint Eriksen (Germany), Dan Segura (Thailand), Alaina McConnell (Spain), Ariana Fiorita (Chile), David Li (inbound France), Sarah Spector (Bolivia), Drew Call (India), Tony Marioni (inbound Belgium), Andrew Wilson (Italy), Sam Sneller (Bolivia), Jennifer Miller (Chile)

We wish our outbound students the best for their year long exchange.

Wooster Arts Jazz Fest 2009
Date: Sunday September 20
11:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.
Historic Downtown Wooster

In its sixth year, this daylong festival features fine art and craft, jazz, quality food, a traditional New Orleans-style parade, and free children’s arts activities. The purpose of this festival is to celebrate and support arts and education in our community, and to promote economic development in downtown Wooster.

Presented through a partnership between Main Street Wooster Foundation, Inc., the Rotary Club of Wooster, and the Wooster City Schools, the Wooster Arts Jazz Fest is organized by volunteers and funded through donations.

The 2009 Wooster Arts Jazz Fest will be the third year the Wooster Rotary Club is a partner in the event. Rotary has representation on the committee organizing the event and will be providing volunteers to help make the event a success.

More information about the WAJF 2009 can be found at: www.woosterartsjazzfest.org

The 2008 Al Van Wie Basketball Tournament and Clinic Activities
November 10-14, 16, 2008

Wooster Rotary sponsors and coordinates a basketball fundamental skills clinic for all boys and girls grade 3-6 and all youth coaches. The event was held at the C.O.W. Timken Gym on Sunday November 16 from 2:00-4:00 pm. College of Wooster Scots players and coaches worked with youth to practice and improve their basketball skills. Rotary also distributed door prizes including College of Wooster T-shirts, basketballs, and season tickets. Head coach, Steve Moore, conducted the coaching seminar. Admission to these events was $2 cash or a canned/box food donation for People to People.

Prior to the tournament, Rotary volunteers went to area schools to collect food donations. Rotary encouraged the schools to participate in the food donation campaign by establishing contests and incentives for the schools collecting/donating the most food items.

Wooster Rotary also sponsored the annual Al Van Wie Rotary Tournament including awards to participating teams: C.O.W., Washington and Jefferson(PA), Messiah(PA), and Randolph-Macon(VA). The tournament dates were November 10-14 at the College of Wooster. Wooster played Washington and Jefferson 8:00pm, and Messiah played Randolph-Macon 6:00 pm on Friday. Losers played the first game Saturday and winners played for championship at 8:00 Saturday. Admission to games was either a ticket or food/cash donation for People to People. There also was be a raffle of donated prizes to add to the dollar total. And Rotary recognized the top food collecting schools before the championship game. This year the tournament brought 3951 food items and $1571.

35th ANNUAL WOOSTER ROTARY
ANTIQUE AND COLLECTABLE AUCTION
Coming: Friday April 9 and Saturday April 10, 2010

34th Rotary Auction Summary

The 34th Rotary Auction was a resounding success. Despite the economic downturn, over 750 bidders turned out to bid on over 2160 items. The highlights of the auction were the sales of an MG TD, 3 pinball machines, jukeboxes, and over 50 lots of Freedlander Department Store items.

The Wooster Rotary Auction is among the premier auctions in this region and is an absolute auction, no minimum, no buybacks, no reserves. In 33 years the proceeds have contributed nearly $850,000 to the community, the major share going to college scholarships.

Preliminary pricing results are posted here.

Each year since 2005, Wooster Rotary has presented a student dictionary to every third grader in the Wooster School System. Our goal is to empower the students with words, to help them better understand the English language and to encourage them to read. The club included a sticker with the Rotary Four-Way test on the inside cover of each volume.

The dictionaries are well received and we hope that the students will use them to their advantage throughout their elementary years.

The 43nd Annual Senior Holiday
December 8, 2008

The Annual Senior Holiday party was held at the High School on December 8, 2009. Entertainment was provided by the Wooster High School Chorus, the Wooster High School Orchestra, The Borderline Dancers and inspirational singer David Greer.

Hundreds of area seniors then enjoyed a dinner served by the Wooster Rotarians. Tickets to the Rotary Senior Holiday Party are highly sought after and are reserved quickly.

A special thank you to all who helped to make this great event possible.