Deborah Simon to address Rotary

Deborah Simon, Rotary District 5520 global grants coordinator, will speak to the Roswell Rotary Club this Thursday.

Deborah was raised in Guatemala as the daughter of missionaries. During her childhood, she became aware of the need for health care and studied nursing at the University of Oregon.

She has worked in several hospitals around the country and served as director of a home health hospice agency. She recently retired from Presbyterian Espanola Hospital.  

Deborah is best known in District 5520 for coordinating Rotary global grant projects in Guatemala, which she has been doing since 1997.

She was a member and past president of the Espanola Rotary Club. Deborah joined the Santa Fe Rotary Club in 2013. She was awarded the Service Above Self Award by District 5520 in 2007. In 2015 and again in 2016, she was honored by Rotary Zone 27 as 1 of 15 people worldwide to receive the Rotary Alumni Global Service Award. Most recently she was made an honorary member of two Rotary clubs in Guatemala. 

In 2004 she established a nonprofit organization called United by Friendship, which focuses on partnering with Latin American communities to work on projects Rotary does not fund, such as schools and clinics.

Each year, Deborah leads a team of volunteers to Guatemala to do needs and sustainability assessments, check on the status of our past projects and select a new global grant project.

Club donates to Homeless Coalition

Roswell Rotary Club President Bianca Cheney presents the Roswell Homeless Coalition clothing and money contributed by club members. Accepting the donations is Erica Boggs of the Coalition.

Cleaning along Rotary Mile

Roswell Rotarians Gordon Patton, Bianca Cheney, Steve Smith, Jon Hitchcock, Frank Sturges, Andy Miller, and Steve Henderson take a break from cleaning along U.S. 285 north of Roswell during highway cleanup day this past Saturday.

Rotarian J.P. Cheney totes a trash bag along U.S. 285 during the club's cleanup of the Rotary Mile north of Roswell.

Chasing Billy the Kid topic of talk

Authors Kurt House and Roy B. Young will speak at this week’s Roswell Rotary Club meeting about their new book, Chasing Billy the Kid: Frank Stewart and the Untold Story of William H. Bonney.

The book gives a full discussion of the posse led by Frank Stewart and Pat Garrett which was successful in the capture.

During their presentation Thursday, House and Young will relate how the book came to be written and some of the information it reveals on Billy the Kid and the previously untold involvement of Frank Stewart.

House, from San Antonio, Texas, was raised on a ranch in Three Rivers, Texas, learning the history of the West from his father and grandfather.

He is an internationally known authority on the cowboy equipment and firearms of the West. House is the author of numerous books on these topics and more than 200 articles on the Wild West.

In 2020, he was honored with the “Six-Shooter Award for Lifetime Contributions to Wild West History.” He is a life member of several historical and collecting organizations and currently is a director of the Wild West History Association (WWHA).

Young, from Apache, Okla., is first vice president and publications editor of WWHA.

He is the author of numerous books on Wild West topics, including the award-winning A Wyatt Earp Anthology: Long May His Story Be Told.

In 2013, he was honored with the “Six-Shooter Award for Lifetime Contributions to Wild West history.”

Young is widely sought as a speaker and this month will make his 20th annual presentation on topics related to Wyatt Earp, the “Gunfight at the OK Corral,” and related topics at the Tombstone Territory Roundup in Tombstone, Ariz. 

Extension agent to address Rotary

Andrew “Drew” Garnett, Chaves County agricultural extension agent, will be speaker at this week’s Roswell Rotary Club meeting.

Drew was raised in Dexter, where he fell in love with entomology through Future Farmers of America.

He received his BS and MS degrees in Agricultural Biology, with an emphasis on Entomology, from New Mexico State University.

Drew moved to Florida, where he taught high school science but returned to his love of entomology by working for Walt Disney World Horticulture for the past five years.

He moved back to Chaves County in the winter of 2021 as the NMSU agricultural extension agent. 

Honoring Vietnam War veteran

Pecos Valley Quilters Dietta Hitchcock (bottom left) and Carolyn Mitchell show the patriotic-themed quilt presented to Marlin Wells, a Vietnam War combat veteran, at last week’s Roswell Rotary Club meeting. Dietta is the wife of Rotarian Jon Hitchcock; Carolyn and Marlin are Roswell Rotarians.

Club highway cleanup Oct. 8

Patton

The Roswell Rotary Club has scheduled cleaning up its mile along U.S. 285 starting at 8 a.m. on Oct. 8, a Saturday. 

Rotarian Gordon Patton, highway cleanup chair, said club volunteers will meet just before 8 a.m. for coffee and snacks at Mile Marker 116.3, about one mile north of the overpass on U.S. 285.

“It takes an ideal group of 12 minimum about 1.5 hours the walk out our mile on both sides of the highway,” Patton said. “Your participation is encouraged to help keep our Rotary Mile from being trashy!”

Gloves, trash bags and safety vests will be provided.