I hope that everyone’s summer was pleasant and it lasted long enough to enjoy! I can tell you my summer flew by, but I did manage to spend time with my family and good friends even though most of the time I was in Denver (a story for another time).

As you know, September marks the beginning of the Sportsman’s Club new year. Before I get into what is coming up, I thought I would review last year’s accomplishments.

First of all, the club collected more than $24,500 – a record year for us! Manhattan Beach Fair and Frontier Days exceeded past years collections in excess of $2,500. The Pancake Breakfast was the only event that fell short of previous years by about $1,000. As a result of our windfalls for the last two years we gave over $5,700 to various groups such as Riviera Elementary, Richardson Middle School, and South High. Allen Watt, our Philanthropic Chairman was very busy finding worthy causes to benefit from our success.

One noteworthy effort was the "Operation Bootstrap" fund that helped support tutoring for at-risk high school students at South. Because of our efforts and the success of the program, the Torrance Board of Education funded South’s program so that it would not rely on donations from groups such as ours. At the end of the school year, Al arranged for our club to donate $200 to Riviera Elementary for bookstore vouchers for the students who worked as parking valets. I hope we can continue to find and fund worthy causes that help our community and schools this coming year.

Our first activity of the year is Manhattan Beach Fair which takes place the first weekend of October – the 3^rd and 4^th. Jeff Wells is the chairman and is already organizing the event. Please be sure to contact Jeff and sign up to help. Jeff will have much more to say about the event at our first meeting, September 9.

Also, please be sure to get your $30 membership dues to Juris as soon as possible. Either send it to him in care of the club post office box or bring it with you to the meeting. Remember, your dues help sponsor the club activities and it ensures your name is included on the club roster which needs to be published in early December.

This year, I want to include in the roster Email addresses for any members who have electronic mail. I would like to use Email to send out the newsletter as well as any special notices for upcoming events such as golf outings, Christmas dinner, etc. So, when you pay your dues, please let Juris, Chris Collignon or myself know what your Email address is so we can put you on the distribution list. We will continue to send out paper mail as we have in the past – we don’t want anyone to be left out!!

I hope you will plan to make it to our upcoming meetings and make note of the club calendar for the coming year. If you have ideas or suggestions, please feel free to call or write me Email (Geoff-Graue@msn.com).

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