| May 6, 2019 -- Since I wrote my last article, March has been a very busy and gratifying month. On March 29 and 30th the Northeast Leaders Conference was held in Norwich, sponsored by your Connecticut State Grange. We had a great turn out for this conference with 117 people registering for the event. We had four excellent speakers that conducted workshops both Friday and Saturday night. They presented a lot of helpful and pertinent information on how to grow our Granges. The Connecticut State Grange was well represented by officers, committee chairs and several Granges sent representatives to this conference. National officers that attended were Betsy Huber, President/Master National Grange, Phil & Maureen Prelli: Overseer, National Grange, Burton Eller, Legislative Director, and Joe Stefanoni, Membership Director. On Saturday evening during the closing banquet; The Northeast Community Service awards were presented. Noel Miller, Community Service Director for Connecticut: presented the Firefighter of the Year Award to Arthur Skip Beebe of the Old Lyme Fire Department from Connecticut. Marie Robidoux: Community Service Director for Rhode Island State Grange; presented the Educator of the Year Award to Sandra Makielski of Davisville Middle School in Rhode Island and presented the Law-Enforcement Officer of the Year Award to: Daniel S. O’Neill and his canine partner: Ruby from the Rhode Island State Police.
I would like to thank all of the Pomona and Community Granges for donating baskets to the “Love of Lillian” fund. We raised $800 from this raffle. Next year’s Northeast Leaders Conference will be hosted by the New York State Grange.
Ag Day at the capitol was also held the end of March. The Ag committee worked to update the Membership Booth for the day. Several pictures of Grange members’ farms were added to this year‘s booth. State Grange members that manned the booth for the day were: J Allen Cameron, Ciri Miller, Alma Graham and George Russell.
The State Grange will have a new office located in Winchester, Connecticut. The new office is part of the Winchester Grange Hall and was formally the Winchester fire department’s meeting room. We will be moving by the end of May and hope to be in there by June 1st. The Board of Directors has made plans for our monthly meetings to be held at Hillstown Grange.
At the State Grange office in Glastonbury: we still have chairs, tables, Grange Stations and other items available; so if you need any of these items please let us know. By the time you read this article: let’s hope we have some nice warm weather that we can enjoy!
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