The Santa Maria Breakfast Rotary Club celebrated the efforts of two Rotarians who established the Club’s book donation program that is still in place twenty years later. Club President Roberto Rodriguez and Orcutt Union School District Supervisor Holly Edds commended Rotarians Betty Miller and Doug Palmer on this project. In 2002, Betty Miller, the Club’s first woman President, established a program to honor each week’s speaker by donating a book in their name to one of the 26 local elementary schools in Santa Maria and Orcutt. Doug Palmer has selected and purchased the books which are hardback Caldecott or Newberry Medal books. After twenty years, the Club donated it’s 1,000th book and determined a celebration was in order.
Literacy, and reading in particular, has a great impact on an individual and on a community at large. Santa Maria Breakfast Rotary recognizes the positive impact of investing in literacy in our community. It was fitting that the celebration was held on a local school campus, Joe Nightingale Elementary School. The meeting ended with a tour of the school library for some Rotarians while others participated in reading books to a second-grade class.
