Help Make the Conference a Success

For the Utah Rotary District Conference, your club is asked to:

1. Create a display about the outstanding accomplishments of your club

2. Put together a team for the URDC golf tournament to benefit Polio Plus!

3. Encourage a talented member or group of members to enter the "Rotary’s Got Talent" competition

4. Roll up your sleeve toward an unofficial District goal of 100 pints of blood

5. Washington County clubs are also asked to join the Rotary choir!

Plan to attend on May 13-15, 2010 in St. George! We can hardly wait to see you!

Rotary Youth Conference Planned

While the grown-ups in Utah Rotary District 5420 are attending their annual conference and learning about club and district programs in the state, approximately 150 youth involved in Interact, Rotaract, RYLA and Rotary Youth Exchange throughout the Beehive State, will also gather in St. George on the weekend of May 13-15, 2010.

The Rotary Youth Conference will include speakers and breakout sessions, hula dancers, tests of athletic prowess in the form of Club Olympics (including medals for the competition), swimming at Sand Hollow Aquatic Center, a couple of service projects - one involving feeding hungry Rotarians and another involving red paint - as well as the introduction of a statewide youth service project and awards for the best of the events promotional videos. Chairman Michael Wells reminds clubs to "encourage your club’s future Rotarians to join in the fun in St. George." For more information, contact the chairman at mwells2811@msn.com.

Cedar City is Southern Utah's First

The distinction of being southern Utah’s oldest Rotary club goes to Cedar City, chartered as RI Club #2083 on June 10, 1925 after the Salt Lake Rotary Club voted to share its territory to organize the state’s first club south of the Wasatch Front. Throughout its impressive 84-year history, the Cedar City Rotary Club has contributed in countless ways to their community, state and the world. Host of the 2005 Utah Rotary District Conference during RI’s Centennial Year, Cedar City Rotarians support the Happy Factory, Boy Scouts, YouthLinc, RYLA, Civil Air Patrol, Cedar City Arts, Boys and Girls State and Rotary Youth Exchange. Members of this club have also gotten involved in literacy issues, raised impressive amounts of funds through golf tournaments and the July Jamboree event; and distributed thousands of dictionaries over the past several years. Internationally they have focused on youth, sanitation and water with several projects in India.

In celebration of the Centennial of Rotary’s founding in 1905, the Cedar City Rotary Club organized an effort to create a Veterans Park in their community. The Club raised and donated the needed $50,000 to get the project underway. A Steering Committee, made up mostly of Rotarians, created committees for each of the wars: WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq/Afghanistan. Robert Mercer, a local architect created the overall design with monuments from each war. The park was dedicated in 2008. In that same year, the club was honored by the Cedar Area Chamber of Commerce with the 2008 Organization for Community Service Award. The Chamber also honored two Rotarians: Jane Norman with the 2008 Outstanding Woman of the Year Award; and, Brian Jorgensen’s business, Mountain West Books and Harmony House with 2008 Progressive Business of the Year Award. Soon after the dedication of the Veterans Park in 2008, Cedar City Rotarians pledged $20,000 to local leaders for the creation of Main Street Park’s entrance signage. Cedar City Rotary Club is truly an example of "service above self" and that a small group of people can change the world!

Rotarians Invited to Give the Gift of Life

The Utah Rotary District Conference in St. George will be an opportunity to advance the Object of Rotary through fellowship, inspirational addresses, and the discussion of matters of importance to Rotary clubs and Rotary International. May 13-15, 2010 will also showcase Rotary programs and successful district and club activities . . . and Rotarians throughout the state of Utah will have the chance to give "service above self" when they are invited to roll up their sleeve and give blood at a time of the year when the need is escalating because of travel and activities which increase the risk for accidents during holidays and summer months.

Do you know:
* Only 5 percent of eligible donors across the nation donate blood, but the number of transfusions nationwide increases by 9 percent every year.
* Each whole blood donation can help as many as three people. One unit is divided into three parts: red blood cells, platelets, and plasma.

To give blood, you must meet the following criteria:

- Be in generally good health and feeling well.

- Be at least 17 years of age

- Weigh at least 110 pounds

- Pulse: 80 to 100 beats/min and regular

- Your temperature should not exceed 99.5 (37.5c)

- The acceptable range for your blood pressure is 160/90 to 110/60

- The venipuncture site should be free of any lesion or scar of needle pricks indicative of addiction to narcotics or frequent blood donation.

The goal for this conference service project is 75-100 pints (more if you are willing!). Please plan to leave a little of yourself at the Utah Rotary District Conference! Blood donation truly is "service above self" and something only you can give! In the words of Utah Rotary's First Lady Pat Trujillo, "if you're a blood owner . . . you can be a blood donor!"

Conference Tournament for Polio Plus

In Rotary’s effort to meet the $200 Million Polio Plus Challenge to eradicate this life-threatening and debillitating disease from the earth, the Utah Rotary District Conference will kick off on Thursday, May 13 with a 7:30 a.m. shotgun start at Sunbrook Golf Course, ranked as one of southern Utah's best courses. Certain to challenge the best golfers, while also providing a fun day of play for the novice, Sunbrook features a variety of elements including well-placed water hazards and holes carved out of volcanic lava fields.

According to Jeff Morby, immediate past president of St. George Rotary Club and chairman of the Utah Rotary District Conference Golf Tournament notes, "One team from each of 44 clubs in Utah Rotary District 5420 will generate about $2000 for Polio Plus!" The cost is just $75 per player or $300 per team, with lunch included. Mulligan tickets will also be on sale at a cost of $10 each . . . and the weather on this mid-May weekend is certain to be perfect!!!

Outstanding Accommodations for District Conference

The new Courtyard by Marriott in sunny St. George includes a luxurious bedding package, complimentary high-speed Internet, stylish decor and a friendly & professional staff. Consistently ranked among the best of 2800 Courtyard by Marriott hotels nationwide for Overall Customer Satisfaction, the Courtyard by Marriott in St. George at the gateway to Zion National Park and only about 120 miles north of the Las Vegas strip. Boasting two pools & two hot tubs, and with room service provided by Iggy's Sports Bar and Grill, the Courtyard St. George is only about a mile from the Gardner Center at Dixie State College and the popular Zion Factory Stores for conference shoppers. To schedule a room for the Utah Rotary District Conference, e-mail June McAfee at june.mcafee@marriott.com or call 435-986-0555 and ask for the "Rotary block." And, its no April Fools joke . . . you need to register by April 1 to get these great rates!

Another option for accommodations while attending the Utah Rotary District Conference is the beautiful new Holiday Inn Express located at 2450 N. Town Center Drive adjacent to the Coral Canyon Golf Course Community, off the I-15 freeway, slightly north of Washington City. Complete with comfortable beds, plasma TV, high speed internet connection, free hot breakfast, outdoor heated pool, a 24-hour fitness center and all within a short drive from spectacular Zion National Park. And pets are welcome (with a small cleaning deposit, of course). To schedule a room (no later than April 12 to get these good rates) for the Utah Rotary District Conference, call 435-986-1313 and ask for the "Rotary block" or e-mail Rotarian trevor.jenson@copperhospitality.com for more information . . . or go to our Holiday Inn Express group website at http://www.ihg.com/h/d/EX/1/en/rates?hotelCode=WSSUT&rateCode=RDC&_IATAno=99502056

Both of these two beautiful facilities are outstanding options for your Utah Rotary District Conference stay!

Music On the Agenda for Rotary Conference

If you have been a Rotarian for awhile, you probably already know singing in Rotary is a long standing tradition. Harry Ruggles, a Chicago printer and Rotary member #5, detested off-color language, malicious innuendo and classless humor and argued in club meetings for clean language. When the speaker at an evening meeting in 1906 began telling a story Harry had heard and knew the off-color ending was not appropriate for the club he had helped form, he jumped up in the middle of the joke and yelled, "C’mon boys, let’s sing!" then led the club in a boisterous rendition of "Let Me Call You Sweetheart!"

Not only was this the first time Rotarians had ever sung together, it was apparently, the first time a group of businessmen had ever sung together in a meeting of any kind! Harry Ruggles apologized to the embarrassed speaker but from that point on, it was decided all subsequent Rotary meetings should be conducted so any woman could attend without being embarrassed. This has been the unwritten rule ever since, just as the tradition of singing has endured.

You can be certain there will be lots of music at the Utah Rotary District Conference, May 13-15, 2010 in St. George, including a performance by the soon-to-be world-renowned Dixie Rotary Choir made up of members of the five southern Utah Rotary clubs (Cedar City, St. George, Dixie Sunrise, Red Rock and Hurricane). You won’t want to miss a single note!!!