Grußworte der Präsidenten
President’s Message
I am happy to report that our Oktoberfest and Taste of Germany were very successful. A great deal of thanks to all our members who volunteer their time to make these projects profitable.
Thanks to our German potato salad chairperson, Marie Reichling and her staff for doing a great job. They cooked 150 pounds of potatoes and nearly all of that was sold on Friday alone. Doris Roach, chairperson of the food booth and Larry Schaltenbrand, chairperson of the beer booth were kept hopping to keep up with the busy pace on Friday and Sat- urday. Incidentally, Larry has served as chair of the beer booth for 14 years and will pass the baton on. Thank you Larry for serving this organization for so many years.
If you did not attend this year’s Taste of Germany dinner, you missed a wonderful evening of entertainment and food. Thanks to Rich Berkel, chairman, for his dedicated work each year on our biggest fundraiser, and to all members on the Taste of Germany committees.
This year’s Hermann award went to Belleville Parks and Recreation Department for all the support they have given us and the work they have done over the years. The membership award was given to Herm Schoener, our membership chairman. Herm keeps our roster up to date and has continued to volunteer on most of our projects over the years. Congratulations to both!
The next general meeting is November 19th at Fischer’s Restaurant. Don’t forget we will have election of officers at this meeting. I want to thank Carrol Moore and Helen Fiedler, the nomi- nating committee, for their work in selecting a slate of officers. I hope everyone plans to at- tend. We would like to welcome Wolfgang and Renate Stueken from Paderborn who will join us for our November general meeting. Wolfgang has done extensive research on Gustav Koerner and will give a special presentation at the Belleville Historical Society’s celebration honoring Gustav Koerner’s 200th birthday anniversary. Bob and Ruth Fritz will be hosting Wolfgang and Renate during their stay in Belleville
Since this will be my last message to all of you as president, I would like to thank everyone who has helped me for the past two years. So many of you willingly offered your time to ac- complish whatever needed to be done. I was proud and eager to serve as your president and thankful for the opportunity. Highlights were the Paderborn Police exchange, the 2008 trip to Paderborn for DAFK’s 20th anniversary celebration and attending the Libori fest. So as we welcome a new president, please give him the generous support and enthusiasm you have shown me.
Ron Fritz
President
News from Paderborn
Here in Germany we had General Elections to the Bundestag, our Parlia- ment, on September 27th. Chancellor Angela Merkel will again head the new government that will be in office for 4 years. On August 30th there was an election of all the city parliaments in North Rhine Westphalia and also of the mayors. Mayor Heinz Paus (61) of Paderborn was returned to office with 50.18 % of the votes. It will be his third term as mayor. He visited Belleville in August 2002.
On August 15th five high school students arrived in Belleville for a three month stay: Laureen Gertzen (hosted by Crystal Zimmermann), Amelie Kroeger (Jackie Bassler), Philipp Dueker (Family Youmanns), Michael Wilmsmann (Christopher Crawford) and Lukas Zimmermann (Kevin Schae- fer). They attended classes at Belleville West and East.
They got a warm welcome by their host families as well as by BSC and were well received at school. On Sept. 13th, Mayor and Rita Eckert gave a won- derful reception at their home for the students and their hosts as well as for board members of BSC.
On Sept. 30th Mayor Eckert gave the students a tour of his office and showed them his „Paderborn Wall“ where he displays photos of his trip to Paderborn in 2008. He also talked to them about pro- jects and programs under way in Belleville. They also had a tour of the police station. The Belleville News Democrat published an interesting article on this visit.
Another highlight for them was a reception at City Hall on Oct 19th just before a meeting of the city aldermen started. Mayor Eckert presented to them certificates reading:
“Certificate of Recognition presented to…(name)… Commemorating your visit to the United States of America during the 20th Anniversary of the Sister Cities Youth Exchange Program and the 20-year friendship between Paderborn, Germany and Belleville, Illinois “
(Mayor’s signature and seal).
The 5 students will return home on Nov. 8th. Their stay in Belleville has been a wonderful experi- ence for them. We are grateful to everybody involved, especially to the host families, the principals of the schools, Mayor Eckert and BSC.
Next year we are expecting the Belleville students in Paderborn.
With the help of BSC and DAFK a contact has been established between McKendree College, Leba- non, football coach Carl Poelker and the secretary of the Paderborn football club, the Dolphins, Nico Meier. We’ll see what will come out of it. Best wishes! Here is their homepage: www.paderborn- dolphins.de It would be great if the Paderborn team could go to the US some time and vice versa… Wolfgang and Renate Stueken will visit Belleville in November 2009. We are proud of Wolfgang hav- ing done so much research on Gustav Koerner.
At this year’s general meeting of DAFK (Sept. 24th) Maria Thomalla, vice president since 1994, did not stand any more for this position. Heiner Sprenkamp who visited Belleville in 2007 was elected. President Broer thanked Maria very warmly for what she had done for DAFK and the relationship with Belleville. Bernd: ”Maria, you have been wonderful”, and everybody agreed. See a picture on our homepage: www.dafk-paderborn.de
DAFK is now looking forward to the big Thanksgiving dinner. We are expecting more than 150 at- tending.
Best wishes also to our friends across the Ocean for Thanksgiving 2009.
Bernd Broer
President
Dr. Otmar Allendorf
Secretary