Jim
Hite organized and conducted the Summer Meeting at R.J.'s Restaurant
in Statesboro, Wednesday, August 10, 2011.
The
meeting started at 9:30 with a welcome from Barry Turner of the
Statesboro Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Kate
Finch, the new president of GREA, informed the group that the GREA
Convention for May 1-3, 2012 will be held in Callaway Gardens in
Pine Mountain, Ga. She was very excited to report that many of the
outdoor activities will be included as part of the package with the
room accommodations and the price will be $119.00 per night. She
also explained why she chose the slogan "A Growing Force." She
has agreed to be our guest speaker for our November meeting.
Jack
Hill was a guest speaker.
Doug
Holt, a spokesperson for AMBA, briefly explained the service
benefits of AMBA.
Mike
Zarem (TRS of GA) said that in 2012 retirees will not have to
paid 65% of their GA taxes and by 2016, all retirees will be exempt
from paying any GA state taxes. ( I hope I understood this bit
of information correctly.)
A
spokesperson from GA Cares explained why and how badly they
need volunteers to help assist seniors with their Medicare benefits.
She said that just four hours a month per person would be a great
help. From what I understand, it is to help the elderly from
being swindled or taken advantage of by giving them useful and
needed information.
James
Twiggs (Membership Director of GREA) emphasis the importance of
encouraging retired educators to join GREA. At the present we have
22,000 GREA members, but their are thousands that have not joined.
He welcomed two unit members to tell some of the ways their unit
recruit member for GREA. David Greene, our president, was
asked to tell what we do. We heard some good suggestions and
will probably discuss these in the future.
Bill
Sloan, (Executive Director of GREA), is very involved with the GA
Education Museum. The museum committee is encouraging each
unit to buy a brick for $100 dollars to help purchase the land for
the museum, and he gave several suggestions on various ways in which
groups of people could buy a brick. (They need $35,000 to
finish buying the land.) He also said that folks need to start
thinking of someone that GREA can present the Education Award to in
May. So far GREA has presented it to Truett Cathy and Zell
Miller.
Note: Dateline on NBC will have a program about Millen, GA (Jenkins
County) called "The Town that Jobs Forgot." It will be at 7 PM,
Sunday, August 14, 2011.
November 6th is Retired Educators Day in GA.
(Please let me know if some of this information is wrong or the
punctuation, capitalization, and spelling needs correcting.)
Thanks, Anne
email:
lamiller_2@msn.com
