diablotoastmasters.org

2^nd Annual Awards banquet

Saturday, April 19^th, 2008, Diablo 598ers gathered together at the Grissini’s Restaurant in the Hilton hotel in Concord, also known as the gathering place for “Post Toasties - 599.”

We had a cozy meeting room to ourselves and about 28 members, family, friends and past members attended the affair. Bill Woolfolk and Ron Jue co-chaired the event. The menu offered a selection of roasted half chicken, penne primavera alfredo and linguini with clams.  For desert, we had a wide range of choices from tiramisu, cannoli, chocolate truffle, coppa spangola, mixed berry cake to gelato of the day.  Various libations flowed continuously and everyone enjoyed their meal.

Past member and former President, Thomas Cloney, returned to join us as our Keynote Speaker for the event. He asked us “How Are We Doing?” He was not merely referring to how we are doing in our lives, etc, but more importantly, are we improving as people and individuals. The speech left everyone inspired and uplifted.

Then came the highly anticipated “roasting” of our immediate past president, Ron Jue. Former President and last year’s “roastee”, Carie Featherstone, got the first shot at roasting Ron, turning up the good-natured heat on Ron’s Table Topic prowess, his gestures and his decibel ranging vocal abilities.  Next was Thomas Valdriz, who decided to “celebrate” Ron instead of “roasting” him. With a few changes to the roasting participants, Carol Sturman and Ashley Harkness stepped up and gave us a hilarious rendition of the “Ronster Mash” with dance steps and Ron-ish gestures! I’m sure Ron will have much to celebrate and remember after this experience under the spot light.

This year’s awards were paired down from last year’s and were much more streamlined. For the “Most Improved Toastmaster” award, the club voted for Rosa Lynn Adams. She has come a long way from her first speech!  The “Kramer” award represented the member who is most creative and generally associated with “thinking out of the box.” That went to none other than our very own Carol Sturman, who has not only enhanced our knowledge of the herbal and plant species, entertained us with her many humorous speeches along with running a meeting backwards one time. Finally, the “Step-Up” award referred to the member who always jumps in to help out at a moment’s notice.  Our immediate past President, Ron Jue, was most deserving of this award.

Our current President, Howard Adams, closed the meeting with his thoughts on the event. He most definitely approved of this year’s food (you’ll have to ask him about that one).

Many of us were pleasantly surprised to see Spencer Hinsdale and his girlfriend join us. We hope that he will return in the future. Ashley served as Historian and took many photos which I hope we will see on the web site.

I think I speak for all of us that attended, the event was a great success and much merriment was had by all.  If you missed the event, hopefully you will join us next year!

Diablo 598 Reporter,

Alice Tsai

Date: Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008 at 3:44 pm | Category: Uncategorized | RSS Feed: RSS 2.0 feed.
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