September 28, 2025

Hello Members and Friends,

What a busy September we have had and such a beautiful month. I feel so fortunate this year – none of those over 40-degree days and enough rain now and then to keep my grass pretty green. Felt like a return to my first days in Grand Forks and that is a long time ago.

Jo Ann and I are involved in the Grand Forks Fall Fair, so we were awfully busy.  Thank goodness for our members who stepped up to look after our table at the Fair.  Big thanks to Ted Harrison, Bob McTavish and Bev DeMaertelaere, Frank Talarico and Jakki and Tony Fryer.  They all have the good fortune to love history and have the gift of gab. 

Following right on the heels of the Grand Forks Fall Fair we attended the 80th Annual Rock Creek Fair. There are fewer vendors in the Pavillion but that only put the focus on us. Thank you, Mickey, Jakki, and Tony, for again sparing me off. I believe that with the take from Founders’ Day, the Greenwood Car Show, our picnic and the two Fairs we brought in over $1400.00 in sales of reports and membership fees.

Barry Noll at the Artisans’ Market in Greenwood purchased more of Al’s two books – “Heritage Comes Alive” is very popular.  I think Al Donnelly would be happy to see how his books are doing, and he would love Barry and Al’s Artisan’s Market. What a lovely addition to Greenwood.

We held our September meeting at City Park. We have planned our AGM for Sunday, October 19th from 12:30 – 2:00 pm. 12:30 to 1 pm will be membership renewal and social – lots of snacks and goodies so do not worry about lunch – and our AGM will begin at 1 pm. We will be holding our meeting at Sacred Heart in the parish hall – 7269 – 9th Street. Hope you will keep this date in mind. I will send another reminder closer to the meeting.

 Joan is gathering materials for a presentation to the Masons’ ladies on October 25th. Sometimes, it feels like there is too much history!!  Here is a picture of our last City Park meeting. We could go there just for fun but as this is Joan’s last year as manager of the camping area we probably will not.

Lorraine and I are still attempting to gain access to our website through “Go Daddy.”  It is very frustrating, but we are still trying because we definitely do not want to lose all of Les’ work nor our website address. We filled out another form on Thursday or Friday and are waiting for their account retrieval team to make a decision. I have been concerned because we know it is past due for payment now but the service agent we spoke to said that was not a problem – here is hoping.

At our September meeting Jakki Fryer and Frank Talarico showed us a sample wooden grave marker. Thanks to Barry Noll for helping with this project. Barry is going to donate his work so basically, we will just be paying for the iron for the “legs” and the preservative. The markers are a work of art and should last a long, long time. Jakki is going to go over the engraving to make it more visible. A big task – thanks for your enthusiasm, Jakki!!

I realized that last newsletter I forgot to include a picture of Les and Al’s bench. So here it is.

We are already getting invitations to Christmas Craft Fairs – we are booked for November 1st at Brown Creek Community Hall, November 29th at both Greenwood and GFSS. Jakki and Tony will take on GFSS and I will travel to Greenwood. Rock Creek is on December 6th – just got the forms today. A little hard to mail payment with the postal strike on. Will not be able to mail out copies of this newsletter either – just hoping the strike does not last long.   

We did do some membership renewals at the Fairs, but I do need to get reminders out. September has been a super busy month for me, but I will get to it.

Our next meeting is at 1:00 pm on October  15, 2025 at the Woodworkers building.

Hope to see you at the AGM for sure.

In History,

Doreen Sorensen

Secretary