Union City Rotary Club - Weekly Bulletin & News

Today, Fellow Rotarian and Pastor of First Baptist Church of Union City, Dr. Matthew Wholfarth will share with us the experiences he encountered while visiting the Holy Land last November. His trip took him into Israel and Jordan. This should be a very interesting power-point presentation, with accompanying slides, as he addresses the historical sites, safety concerns and relations between Jews and Muslims in the region.

Dr. Matt has served as Pastor of U.C. First Baptist since 2006, coming here from First Baptist of Jonesboro Louisiana, having served that church for four years, 2002-2006, and prior to that serving at First Baptist Church of Hammond, Louisiana. He is also on the staff at UTM as Adjunct faculty as of Spring 2007.

Dr. Matthew received his Bachelor of Arts, History and Public Communications in 1990 from Southwest Texas State University, his Master of Divinity with Biblical Languages in 1995 from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, his Master of Arts in History, Thesis Track in 2002 from Southeastern Louisiana Univ. and his Doctor of Philosophy in 2002 from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.

He enjoys backpacking on the Appalachian trail and is married to Ann Cherith Wohlfarth, they have three children, Daniel, Luke and Victoria

Next week, Trevor Hurst of Ferry Morse Seed Company will visit and tell the story of the long time seed company, it’s history and plans the company has for the future. Ferry Morse has been in business in Western Kentucky since 1959.

Trevor is a native of Memphis, Tennessee, where he attended Christian Brothers High School, after graduation he signed a scholarship to play football at UTM, playing from 1990-1994. While at UTM, Trevor was selected as the 1993 H.K. Grantham Scholarship Award winner for outstanding academic and athletic ability. He was also the team captain in 1993 as well as being named Academic All Conference. He graduated with a Degree in Business Administration - Management in 1994.

He began his work career at the Fulton Bank in Fulton and later First State Bank. While he was in the banking business he received his MBA in 1997 from UTM. Six years ago he opted to change his career and began working for Ferry Morse Seed Company. Since that time he has served as Vice-president and Chief Financial Officer for that company.

Last week, Union City Rotarians had the pleasure of helping celebrate long-time Rotarian Bill Tanner’s 90th Birthday. It turned into a fantastic feature, as all who were present got to partake of a piece of his birthday cake, along with several members of Bill’s family who were surprise visitors to help in the celebration of such a joyous occasion.

Also last week we were once again caught up in a history lesson, as long time Coach Bob Carroll presented "History of UTM", Part II. Before Coach began, he and Randy had a few jibes for each other, and I wonder if we couldn’t make an entire program of these if we could find someone who knows Randy Barns as well as Coach Carroll seems to.

There was a brief re-cap of his last program before he went on to the 50’s and 60’s. Coach mentioned that the school survived WWII, with forty two alumni from UTM loosing their lives in that war, which was a very high number for a school the size of Martin. He also said that in 1947 Look Magazine declared UT Martin to be one of the top fifteen Junior colleges in the nation. Then there was a call to expand the Junior College, with several people from Union City playing a major roll in this expansion, he mentioned such names as Charlie Thomas, Hardy Graham, Jack Burdick, Fats Everett to name a few. The two four courses which were added to make it a four year school were Ag. and Home Economics.

In the 1950’s he briefly talked about the different things freshmen had to wear, and do to become initiated into the college. He said the school did not enjoy rapid growth in the 1950’s, going from 416 students in 1951 up to a little over 1,000 by 1960, then in 1962 ROTC was introduced and in 1964 ROTC became a four year program.

Coach named several professors of the time and had some colorful stories concerning some of these people. He said in the fall of 1950, there were some partial scholarships available in athletics and he was one of those recipients, which included your room, books, and you could work and earn $20.00 a month. Then in 1958, his second year as Head Coach, there were full scholarships. Tom Elam was instrumental in this venture, as he recommended that the school be given 30 such scholarships, with a waiver of fees.

And again space does not permit the coverage of the entire history lesson, but most of us here know " The Rest of The Story".

Coming Attractions

Jan. 23 - Trevor Hurst - Ferry Morse Seed Company

Jan. 30 - John Peters - co-author of "On the Ground - The Secret War in Vietnam"

Feb. 06 - Paul Marsidi - Komodo Dragons of Indonesia

Feb. 13 - TBA

Feb. 20 - Dr. Stan Dungan - UTM Earthquakes in the New Madrid Seismic zone

Birthdays

Jan. 18 - Eddie Hill

Jan. 19 - Julius Falkoff

Anniversaries

Jan. 16 - Ron and Robbie Green

Jan. 19 - Nick and Emily Hall

100 years ago 1909

Sugar cost four cents a pound.

Eggs were fourteen cants a dozen.

Coffee was fifteen cents a pound.

Most women only washed their hair once a month and used Borax or egg yolks for shampoo.

Canada passed a law that prohibited poor people from entering into their country for any reason.

The American flag had 45 stars.

Basketball Tonight

Dresden @ Union City

So. Fulton @ Lake Co.

Crockett Co. @ OCCHS

Jan. 17 UTM Skyhawks @ Jacksonville

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