Today’s Meeting: Melody Ray – Home Nursing – Discussing a book she has recently written
Future Speakers:
October 16th – Aaron Kovach – Cryotherapy
October 23rd – Jennifer Knisely – Altoona Library Services
October 30th – Dave Aikens – Discussing his recent trip to the AMBUCS National Convention
Whacha’ May Have Missed Last Week: Our guest speaker was Lisa Hann of Family Services Incorporated. Lisa, who is a Carlisle native, moved to the area in 1987 and is currently the Executive Director of Family Services. She said that her organization 
has served the Blair County area for 90 years. The organization’s name has changed over the years, but their mission to help youth and their families has remained constant since their inception when they were involved with adoptions. One of their newer services is supporting victims of crimes, often times even attending court sessions with the victims. They recently shut down one of their shelters but they still manage to serve clients through their youth center at 6th Avenue and 17th Street, their homeless family shelter, and their group homes; all with a staff of 140. Lisa presented some disturbing statistics; such as that there were 174 evictions in Blair County last year. She said that Family Services served 639 people in their shelters over the last three years…. but they also had to turn away over 2,000 individuals, mainly due to limited shelter space being available. Hopefully some of those families can be served in the future when a proposed $2.3 million renovation is finalized for the old Drenning building at 2300 North Branch Avenue. The building will house 35 beds and six 2-bedroom apartments. The project will be paid for by grants as well as a capital campaign. For more information on Family Services, visit them at www.familyservicesinc.net.
….Also at lunch we recognized those Ambucs who are members of the “500 Club”. Those members who sold $500 of Christmas candy, made a $200 donation (our profit from $500 of candy), or some combination of the two; were thanked with a special lunch. Members of the “500 Club” over one or both of the last two years includes Bruce Brower, Ken Decker, Paul Dick, Bob Fiore, Vic Gioiosa, Sandy Gregory, Linda Horomanski, Bill Hoyne, Jim Huff, Michele Lloyd, John Lloyd, Jack McDougal, Dean McKnight, Tim Parnell, Jack Rawlings, Bill Reintgen, Alex Seltzer, Mike Strait, and Kathy Storm. A big thanks goes out to Linda Horomanski who organized the recognition lunch.
Guests of the Day:
…..Our guests last week were three students from the Social Media Marketing class at PSU-Altoona. The students will be examining the Altoona AMBUCS with an emphasis on determining what things we may be able to do to improve our visability in the community. Shown here is Rachel DiAndrea talking to Chris Kuhn, Minh Nguyen, and Catherine Rossman.
News of the Week:
…..President Kristan passed around a sign-up sheet to man the AMBUCS booth at this year’s Pumpkinfest in downtown Hollidaysburg on Saturday October 20th. We will have a booth with an Amtryke on display and we will be selling Gardner’s candy bars as an early kickoff to our annual Christmas candy sale. Why not help spread the word about AMBUCS and sign up for an hour.
…..The AMBUCS board met last week with the following meeting highlights:
- A $500 donation was approved for ARC to support them with a planned trip for their clients to Asbury Park, N.J.
- A suggestion to plan a monthly AMBUCS Happy Hour Social was discussed. Carl Gingrich will work with Social chairman Jim Huff on this.
- A review of our Amtryke grants for the club year now total $18,894. We budgeted $20,000 for the club year.
- We reviewed an invitation to the club from the Sunshine Rotary club to participate in their annual spaghetti dinner fundraiser next April. If we agree to participate, we will be expected to sell tickets to the event at $8, find corporate sponsors at $200, obtain corporate placemat adds at $75, help provide desserts, and provide volunteers to help the day of the event. For our efforts, it is anticipated that we would receive $3,000 to $4,000 from the profits. More details will be presented to the membership this week and a club discussion on the idea will be scheduled for a future meeting.
…..Amtryke Chairman, Michele Lloyd’s minions were again hard at work last week as three more trykes were assembled by Paul Dick, Ed Farabaugh, and John Lloyd. Michele reports that all backordered trykes have now been received.
…..There were two teams that scored “33” over the weekend! Both the Panthers (Tony Miller) and the Rams (Rudy Turco) scored 33 which means they split the $30 pot and each win $15 (barring any Monday Night Football 33’s) and their opponents, the Giants (Mark Ford) and Seahawks (Ken Decker) each win $5. Three of the first five weeks have had 33 scores.
…..Last week’s raffle ticket winner was Derek Martin. Unfortunately for Derek he chose the Four of Diamonds. That means that next week’s winner will be choosing from the remaining 47 cards (45 cards – 2 Jokers) for a chance to win the pot of nearly $200. Good luck!
In Closing:
