Newsletter - Archive  Dec 3, 2007

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Welcome to our new Sunrise Rotary website (www.norwichsunriserotary.org). By now I hope most or all of you have logged in a looked around the site. We finally have a COMPLETE directory of our members with all of the contact information up to date!!! Hopefully this will make getting in touch with each other much easier by keeping the info in this centralized and easy to maintain location. Gone are the days of searching for the paper directory only to find new members not listed, old members still listed and outdated email, telephone, and addresses. I encourage all of you to keep your information current and fact check the entries I have made for you. I know all email addresses are correct as I have gotten replies for any bad email addresses and corrected them. Please bear with me as I learn how to operate this site and make is as content rich as possible. Also do not hesitate to get in touch with me with any questions or suggestions as they will only help make this site as successful as possible. We will be adding photographs, attendance records, Rotary related links, and other club relevant materials as they become available. Please check back often as I have been putting some time into learning the website publishing ropes.

Greg Arnold

On to the newsletter.......

This being the first Norwich Sunrise Rotary Newsletter that I can recall I take great pleasure in being the one to write it! As our club grows and matures I'm sure we will have great fun growing our list of accomplishments as well.

Our club has recently completed two community service projects in recent weeks, the 1st of which involved a dangerous and seemingly impossible rebuild of a retaining wall on Cliff St. at the Katie Blair House. The project took a total of three weeks for Sunrise Construction to complete and saved the Katie Blair house over $100000 in repair costs. Week one was a cold, windy and rainy event where the goal was to remove some trees that had caused the wall to crumble. Jonathan Woyasz brought a bucket truck with him to help the cause and positioned the truck hanging over a very wet and steep hill. Safety being our first priority prompted George Mattern to "hold" the 4 ton truck steady with by applying hand pressure to the hood. Jon went unscathed the entire morning until the final cut of the main tree trunk where Jim Troeger decided waiting for Jon to clear himself out of the way would take too long and began the cut. Short of a loss of color to his face Jon made it to the ground unharmed and lives to tell the tale. The following two weekends of the project involved plenty of hard physical labor headed up as always by Sunrise Constructions project manager George Mattern.  Weekend two the excavation and rebuilding began, much progress was made with the help of modern comforts such as a block and tackle, pulley systems and a few sparkling clean 5 gallon buckets. The final Saturday of work capped the project with some 3rd world staging set up and little to no arguing. One rather large stone did manage to get away from us and come to rest in the backyard of a resident on N. Main St. No screaming was heard but some debris in the yard was flattened. The wall will stand strong for another 100 years judging by Jim Troegers precision stonework and the hard work of Sunrise Construction regulars including Jon, George, Adam, Hank, Mark, Jay, Greg, and Matt.

The most recent Sunrise Construction completion came this past weekend with the installation of a modular handicapped ramp in Norwich. A quick project of only four hours put a few needed adjustments to an existing deck and added a 32 foot long steel ramp on a house off of Old Canterbury Turnpike. The bitter cold and wind rose again but could not keep Brian, Adam, George, Matt, Les, Greg, Mark, Jay, Jim, and Jon away from a much needed project. The 720 pound ramp was unpacked, assembled, and fastened securely with virtually no bickering (very uncharacteristic of Sunrise Construction). The cause of the calm has been pointed to a severe cold that Jim Troeger had that made him very complacent. A few minor adjustments made by George completed the last project of 2007. The ramp was stress tested before we stamped it finished where the 10 of us stood proudly on the ramp to ensure it's strength.

A few pictures will be added shortly to illustrate these and many other projects our club has completed in recent years. It should be noted that each and every construction project is toasted immediately following the days work. Often the celebration matches the project hour for hour. A well deserved reward for a job well done.

That is all for now, with the Holiday Party fast approaching and some new ideas for 2008 there will be more stories in the making in the near future to be documented here.