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08/23/2006: "Alumni association needs volunteers to step up"

It may be premature to place things in the “desparate” category, but the Crofton Alumni Association really needs members to step up and take the officer positions that are open.
At the last Alumni banquet, president JoAnn Wiebelhaus, Jeff Donner, vice president and secretary Eva Wiebelhuas announced they were stepping down from their positions.
And this time, they mean it.
Treasurer Peg Schieffer is staying on in that capacity, but there are three glaring vacancies on the alumni board, and though the 2007 reunion is 10 months away, the association can’t drift along too much longer.

Eva and Donner have taken care of the wrapup tasks from the 2006 reunion banquet, and have secured the locations and set the date for the ‘07 event.
Because the St. Rose Hall had already been rented for the weekend of the banquet, the event has been moved to the Crofton city auditorium. The date, which always coincides with the Crofton street dance, will be June 30.
But now the rest of the planning needs to be done, and there is no one to take care of those tasks at this time.
“I don’t want to see what we’ve worked so hard to develop just fall apart,” said Wiebelhaus, who served the association for the past 10 years. Wiebelhaus said that she and Donner will help the new officers in the transition, “to a degree,”, and will answer any questions they ask, but they will not be a part of the overall planning of the ‘07 event.
Eva noted that if more alumni were to pay the $4 membership dues, there would be more money available, and perhaps the alumni association might consider paying the secretary some kind of stipend to do the job.
“I’m not suggesting a particular amount, but it could be enough to make the job worth doing,” she stated.
One thing the resigning officers did when they got into office was build up the financial standing of the alumni association. Eva noted the association is in good financial standing right now, but if the alums wanted to pay someone a stipend for doing the secretary’s job, more members will have to join and more dues will have to be paid.
Shirley Sawatzke, who has worked closely with Eva developing and maintaining the alumni database, has said she will continue to serve the association in that capacity.
So now it’s time for CHS alums to step up and volunteer. The alumni association is an organization that is certainly needed in the Crofton community. The school has been sending graduates out into the world since the early 1900s, so there are many Crofton alums scattered through the nation. Beyond holding the annual reunion banquet, the association is the entity that ties all CHS graduates together.
“We’ve heard lots of positive comments on the alumni association and the banquet,” noted Eva, “that it would be a shame to see it collapse because someone wasn’t willing to volunteer their time.”