Potentate’s Notes September 2024

Hi Nobles and Families,

I can not believe another summer is past us. Where does the time go?? Imperial Session was attended well by your Divan and Past Potentates. Voting on issues went well, even though a few of us ended up with COVID coming home.

A great time was had at the Zenobia Mud Hens game by all who attended, but was disappointed with how few members/families we had there. I would like to thank Bob Young for chairing this event again. We had a Ceremonial at the end of July and brought in seven new Nobles. I would like to thank the Valley of Firelands for their help and the Zenobia Shrine Clowns for use of their building. We then had the Zenobia Youth Picnic the following day, which was attended well by the Rainbow Girls and DeMolay boys. Thank you to all who helped with this event and thanks to all the families who attended. Hopefully we are building more aware­ness of our youth organizations that will lead to future members of our organizations.

The Zenobia Shrine John Hoffman Memorial golf outing was en­joyed by all 13 teams that registered, and was a beautiful day to enjoy the course. I would like to thank all of our members and non-members to make the National Tractor Pull event a success to ensure raffle tickets are sold for our fall fund-raiser and to promote Masonry and Shrinedom to those who do not know about it. I want to give a special thank you to Ill. Sir Ty Stout, Steve Horton and Dave Hef­flinger, for ensuring all volunteers were taken care of.

Nobles and families, what does it mean to be a Shriner to you? For everyone, it is something different. But I am calling on our younger members to become more involved and learn more about your philanthropy that you wanted to be a part of. We are running out of members to volunteer for all of our activities and some are getting burned out. We need to keep the fire alive in all of us, but it takes MANY hands from ALL to get involved. We do several dif­ferent activities that you may find an interest in and are always will­ing to do something new. If you have an idea, talk to a Divan member and see how we can make this happen.

David Coy has resigned as our treasurer, but is still in the process of helping Georgia Durain learn the bookkeeping. I have now ap­pointed Past Grandmaster, Most Worshipful Brother Steven Grindle as our treasurer, who will be reporting our numbers to the nobility and then working with Georgia.

We are still looking for a Hadji Editor that pays $100/month for 10 months of the year. Our current editor is unable to continue due to health issues. Please reach out to any Divan member or Brage El­liott for more details. This job is really easy and is mostly just proof­reading and ensuring all units/clubs and others are submitting their monthly articles and receiving flyers from chairmen to be posted for upcoming events. The information is then sent to our publisher who does the layout.

GLSA will be September 19-21 in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, this year. This is very close this year and if you are interested in going or para­ding, please let me know. Finally last, but not least, please keep Sat­urday, October 5 available for our Sportsmen’s Extravaganza. We will need help manning this event, so please see Tom Binder or my­self, if you would like to volunteer. Any bit of time you can assist will be a help. If any clubs/units or lodges would like to have a side raffle table, please contact the office to get a registration form.

Illustrious Sir, Bernie Welniak, you will be greatly missed by all.