Farmville – At its meeting on June 27, 2024, Shaunna Hunter, outgoing President of the Rotary Club of Farmville, VA, recognized several Club Members and a community member for their outstanding service during the 2023-2024 year.
Those recognized include:
Rotarian of the Year – Julie Flores
The Farmville Club recorded 735 service hours this past year. And one person’s service accounts for 10% of that total, in a club of over 50 members. This year Julie Flores started tracking our service hours in the Engagement module of DACdb. And it is probably no surprise to any of you that our Service Chair is the Rotarian with the most hours served. Julie planned service projects 11 months out of 12. She reached out to organizations, made contacts, set dates, communicated with all of us, created signups and sent reminders (she sent one today!), and every time she possibly could, she showed up and worked alongside us. Julie is unfailingly kind, generous, and was willing to work on any idea I came up with. We had a very good year for membership this year (12 new members!), one of the best in the district, and we attribute that success to us being out visibly serving our community. Thank you, Julie, for all you did to get us out to Habitat, the Walk to End Alzheimer’s, the PE Food Markets, the Moton Community Prayer Breakfast, Prince Edward Christmas Mother, Madeline’s House, FACES, and more. You are a Service Above Self inspiration to us all.
New Rotarian of the Year – Conrad Taylor
President Shaunna noted that this award was a special because this was the first new member she initiated as Club President. For having the best attendance of this year’s new members, for regularly attending both meeting times and joining our socials, for participating in several service projects – especially our Madeline’s House work days and being an integral part of the Habitat for Humanity landscaping project – and for cheerfully hanging out with the Happy Hour Crew, telling me in his own words “he doesn’t go for the beer, he goes for the fellowship,” she recognized Conrad Taylor with the New Rotarian of the Year award.
President’s Award – Sue Carter
In gratitude for being President Shaunna’s biggest cheerleader and encourager, for generously telling her she was doing a good job in my moments of self-doubt, and for being an incredible behind-the-scenes program planner and creator of our awesome weekly newsletter the Weekly Wire, Shaunna awarded a special President’s Award for service to Sue Carter.
Honorary Rotarian: Sandy Cooke
This year’s Honorary Rotarian is Sandy Cooke. Sandy’s title at Hampden-Sydney is Director of Student Affairs Operations, Orientation, and Civic Engagement. That means she does a lot of things, but the part she enjoys most is planning service projects for students. She’s not required to go out and work alongside them, but she does it all the time. If you see a Hampden-Sydney man out serving in our community – we have no doubt Sandy is the reason why. As an example, the day before Taste of Farmville, Sandy was with a group of our students working at the Food Market at the Sports Arena. At the end of the event the students helped clean up, but then stayed to help the Club set up all of our tables and chairs for Taste of Farmville. They finished the job in probably 15 minutes, and probably didn’t think a thing of it. Go Tigers, and Go Sandy. You make us better.
Shaunna is the Library Director at the Bortz Library at Hampden-Sydney College. A Virginia native, Shaunna lives in Farmville, Virginia with her husband Sean and they have one daughter Teagan (Rising 8th Grader at Fuqua School).