Rotarian Bob Sharkey, left, helps Mid Valley Elementary students look up words.
Paul Crowley
For the last 25 years, the Hood River Rotary Club has delivered a dictionary to every fifth grader attending an accredited school in Hood River County. The list includes Cacade Locks, Horizon Christian, Mid Valley, Parkdale and Westside. Over the years, Rotary has delivered about 7,500 dictionaries.
Last year as students at Cascade Locks were working on using their dictionaries their teacher, Derek Gries, said, “Students, the alphabet is the roadmap to the written word,” as he pointed at the alphabet posted on the classroom wall.
“That was a manifest moment,” said Dictionary Committee Chair Paul Crowley. “In this electronic age, students think differently. Google fills in the gaps. Dictionaries help them think more thoroughly. They need to break a word down and work through its spelling.”
Highlights of this year’s program included a club celebration featuring a cake that looked like a dictionary and the students at Mid Valley singing “Happy Anniversary Dear Rotary” to the tune of “Happy Birthday.”
Crowley is the lone remaining founding member of the program and has served as the chair for 24 years. Several of the committee’s other members have been participating for at least 10 years and in some cases close to 20 years. They include Judy Dutcher, John Kasberger, Maui Meyer and Jean Sheppard.
Other members who assisted this year are the club’s president, Emily Curtis, Doug Campbell, Susan Frost, Chelsea Marr and Bob Sharkey.
Hood River Stationers provides the books to the club at cost.
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