Gold Was Struck In Newtown

At Rotary’s 32nd Annual Raffle

The Rotary Club of Newtown held its 32nd Gold Raffle fundraiser at the Fireside Inn Monday evening. Dr Robert Grossman was the official master of ceremonies and handled pulling of the losing and the winning numbers out of the ever-turning drum.

Betsy Hartmayer of Woodbridge was the lucky grand winner of a troy pound of gold coins, followed by Dick Olsen of Newtown who went home with six ounces, Ed Osterman of Newtown with four ounces, Bob Tendler of Newtown with two ounces, and Sharon Gardner of Sandy Hook with one ounce.

In addition, 21 other winners went home with 2/10th of an ounce of gold. Since there were only 250 tickets sold the chances of winning were quite good.

Proceeds of the raffle are used to support the many organizations and projects that the club supports during the year. While many local organizations benefit from the fundraisers of Newtown Rotary, the club also supports projects in such far away places as South Africa and India where help is desperately needed, at times, just to survive

Newton Rotary has been instrumental in sending two enormous containers of used school books (approximately 80,000 books per container) to the Bedfordview Rotary Club in South Africa. Illiteracy is as high as 80 percent in South Africa since apartheid ended in 1994 the country has been working hard to correct this situation. Bedfordview Rotary has so far distributed more than eight million books to teachers who are in desperate need of them. Newtown Rotary is currently in the midst of packing a third container, which will be full of computers and school books.

There were a number of intermissions during the drawing of the numbers at Monday night’s raffle. Music was furnished by Mr DJ. Dan Honen was chairman of the affair, assisted by Donna Williams and Bill Calderara.