Norsk News 2/19/25
Attendance
Paul Christian, Steve Salerno, Laura Armstrong, Sarah Straka, Dana Fager, Dave Reed. Peggy Zalucha, Elizabeth Grabe, Franke Wallitsch,, Judy Steinhauer, Svetlana Neshlyaeva, Tammy Wedig, Heidi Kopras, Mark Rooney, Jorge Sevilla, Brent Yauchlar. Guests Susan Walllitsch, Peter Walton, Dave Reed's daughter, Rachel.
Student Rotarians
Laurel Helland (right) is involved in leadership, with organizations such as DECA, and the Energy Team.
Her conservation group competed in Focus on Energy contest. The club monitored energy consumption at the school, and was able to reduce usage by 4% by working with students and building awareness on ways to be more efficient with energy use.
Isabel Muños (left) has been dancing since she has been 3 years old. Now she teaches younger students at Forte studio. This spring she will be in track working on hurdles, she likes volunteering and wants to be part of the community. She has been involved with Club Interact for several years.
Happy Bucks
Dave is happy for his daughter joining us. She is an OR nurse and UW graduate.
Paul has 2 happy bucks. One for the success of the super brunch and for everyone’s help. Secondly, on Saturday he went to a gymnastics meet at the state’s largest Culvers.
Hel visited the world's largest Culver's in Newville where a Rotary flag is posted in the front room similar to our club.
Newville, WI home of the world's largest Culver's and the 4-way test.
Laura Armstrong is excited to be attending as a full fledged meeting.
Steve Salerno is happy for his 30th wedding anniversary trip to Florida with his wife including a trip to Disney.
Svetlana is happy went to DC National Archives gallery to see some of the Russian art that had been sold as a way to fund the government.
Sarah Straka's happy buck today is this is her father’s 70th birthday, she is also happy for the last kid with braces.
Peter Walton is happy for the Optimist Club’s Super Bowl Square game. Kurt Wedig and Brent both won a prize. He appreciates our event that helps the Optimist Club which benefits the kids. In conjunction with our Super Brunch, the Optimist Club generated over $9k to benefit children in our community.
Announcements:
Thanks to Brent's succession planning efforts and "lining up the planes on the runway", Elizabeth Grabe is our president elect nominee heading to PETS this month, and Keith White will be the next nominee-nominee.
Sadly Steve Helwig is leaving our club, and plans to continue with helping our fundraising. We deeply appreciate Steve's tireless efforts to support our club and wish him well on his future ventures.

We got to know about our district governor who shared his story and his wish list for the mission of peace.
Peace is one of the 7 areas of focus of Rotary, and he left us with a to-do list on how to go about making changes.
Our District Governor asks that we take the initiative to be a facilitator of peace. Rotary collaborates with the Institute for Economics and Peace and provides training through The Rotary Positive Peace Academy Course: click on the link to take the free course and to learn how to facilitate peace in our communities.
How can we impact peace in Wisconsin? A few examples are RYLA, Youth Exchange, District and local grants, Emergency Disaster response.
"Peace isn’t easy work." He says, and Rotary has a long relationship with the United Nations going back to its beginnings. Rotary has a chair in UN Economic and Social council as district member Ed Futa has served as a member.
(Below) A closer look at gifts from Mt. Horeb including Franke's coffee right before the handoff to the governor.
A thank you basket from the club.