Special to The Leader

Vidor Rotary Club members put their motto of SERVICE ABOVE SELF to work on Thursday as they took the green bus full of books and school supplies to Deweyville for the elementary teachers who lost everything in the recent floods.  “We had a lot of class sets of youth and children’s books such as novels and early readers,” says Vidor Rotary Club President Karen Tipton.  “After seeing on the news about Deweyville teachers loosing their books and everything, we felt like we certainly had more than enough to share.  While we keep books on the green bus for our Vidor children, we really don’t need twenty-five copies of a book.  So we were thrilled to be able to present those to Deweyville teachers for use in their classrooms.”

Rotarian Sally Andrews spent part of a Spring Break day working in the book storage room Vidor Rotary has at Capital One Bank, sorting out science and history books for young people, as well as class sets of books, teaching materials, dictionaries, and other items for use in classrooms.  She was joined by President Elect Tim Andrews on Thursday as they drove the green bus to Deweyville to deliver about thirty-five boxes of books to teachers.

“They were excited to see those class sets of books,” said Tim Andrews.  “Many of the books we had to share were brand new.  One of the teachers said they had to start from scratch with nothing, and that what we had to offer was very much needed and welcome.”  He and Sally enjoyed seeing how happy the teachers were to receive the books.  There were also some take-home materials for children to use with their parents at home.

Rotarian Jeff Leger, principal of Vidor Elementary, also donated a valuable gift….four big dry erase boards.  Those were delivered along with the books, and will be used in the gym at Deweyville to begin with. The gym is being used as four classrooms for elementary students for the time being.

“We as Rotarians keep service above everything else,” said President Elect Andrews.  “Our goal is to find what needs to be done for others and then do it. We felt like we did that in Deweyville, and we were honored to be able to help.”