At 1:00 p.m., Eva Stimson began the meeting, and invited Betsy Blocker to give the invocation. Betsy read the poem entitled “Leaves,” by L.C. Brady, and recited a fall prayer.
Eva then led the Pledge of Allegiance, then asked for introductions from the three guests at the meeting: Ciscley Elliott, a guest speaker from another area club; Linda Patton, director’s assistant to Rhashell Hunter in the Presbyterian Center; and Jeffrey Johnson, returning after an initial visit to the club two years ago.
During the business meeting, Eva announced that the next executive committee meeting will be held at 1 p.m. on Tuesday, September 22. Becki Moody, Vice President of Membership, informed the club that there is a Smedley Award available for Toastmasters clubs that add five new members between August and September. She noted that we have already added two new members since August. Ada Middleton, club Treasurer, called for club dues: they are due to Toastmasters headquarters by the end of September, and she is hoping to have all of the dues in her possession by September 18. The minutes for the August 18 meeting were approved as written.
Eva introduced Joelle Anderson as Toastmaster.
Joelle introduced guest speaker Cicley Elliott, who then gave her award-winning humorous speech entitled “A Fitting Place,” about a much-loved bra store in Memphis, Tennessee.
After Ciscley’s speech, Joelle asked members of the Evaluation Team to explain their roles: Speech Evaluator—Perry Chang; Timer—Patricia Longfellow; Table Topics—Kim Kaberle; Ah Counter/Grammarian—Eric Darnell; Vote Counter—Vince Patton.
Eric Darnell chose catalyst as the word of the day.
Joelle invited Kim to proceed with Table Topics. Kim’s Table Topics theme was the fall season, and she added a little surprise to the exercise by sometimes asking the person who drew a question to pass the question off to another person.
Joelle then asked for reports from the evaluation team.
Perry Chang’s speech evaluation was unique in that it was the second time he had heard the speech (the first time being at the area speech competition). He noted that Ciscley had worked to improve the speech since the competition by including more information pertaining to men in the speech, and by using more vocal variety.
Timer Patricia Longfellow reported the following times:
Ciscley Elliott’s speech 6:25
Perry Chang’s speech evaluation 2:38
Table Topics:
- Becki Moody 1:05
- Eric Darnell 0:52
- Eva Stimson 1:14
- Ciscley Elliott 1:00
- Vince Patton 0:57
- Betsy Blocker 1:03
Ah Counter/Grammarian Eric Darnell counted 25 space fillers, four sentence-shifts, and one word of the day used during the meeting. He also mentioned hearing a lot of run-on sentences throughout the meeting.
Vote Counter Vince Patton announced a Table Topics tie between Betsy Blocker and Eric Darnell.
After noting that this meeting could serve as a catalyst to do a humorous speech, Eva closed the meeting at 1:45 p.m.
