Congratulations to Bob Rogers, President of EECU, recipient of the chapter’s Distinguished Service Award. As most of our members know, Bob will be retiring at the end of April and the chapter took the opportunity to thank him for all he has done to support the chapter, especially our school Christmas parties and Credit Unions For Kids. Bob’s family was able to join us for the occassion and his grandson was his constant companion throughout the night.

A couple of quick plugs:

Our next meeting is on a special night – Monday, May 15th. Congressman Kenny Marchant will be our presenter.

TCUL has I Love My Credit Union T-shirts for sale. Proceeds to benefit TCUL-PAC.

Check out our photo site for pictures from the April meeting.

The credit union trade press has really taken notice of a recent “Mega Bank” full page ad that ran in the Fort Star Telegram.

CUNA News Now made mention of the ad in a March 8th article about credit union conversions in Dallas and Fort Worth. Mentions have also appeared in the Lonestar Leaguer (password required) and in Credit Union Times (home page)

If you haven’t seen the ad, we’ve posted it here.

A special thank you to Fort Worth Community Credit Union for putting the ad together and for graciously including the chapter logo.

Southwest CUNA Management School is coming up sooner than one might think. Once again, the Chapter is offering scholarships to employees of member and affiliated credit unions. The application and instructions can be downloaded here:

• Scholarship Application

Nancy Croix-Stroud, President of First Class American CU serves as the Chair of our scholarship committee.

Our annual school parties are behind us. As they always do, the days with the kids put all of our volunteers in the holiday mood.

A big thank you to everyone who played a part in making these parties so special. Some gave of their time; some made donations of coats, gloves or money; some baked goodies and some pitched in extra at work so others could be at the parties. To everyone, THANK YOU!

“An extra candy cane in your stocking” for Mark Massey, Bruce Chadwick, Vince Heimann, Sheleah Hughes, Terrie Johnson, Kathie Wood, Raymond Shands, J.D. Shipp, Rita Dexter, Walter Furnace and all the guys who carried the games!

I have hundreds of pictures and only so much space to post them on the site. A few will go up in the coming days, but more may have to wait until after the holidays.

On November 9th we had a great turnout for some very valuable training on the Bank Secrecy Act and accounting changes necessitated by changes in call reporting. I for one had a few things to do when I got back to the office!

John Zasada and Dan Moulton from one of our Preferred Partners RSM McGladrey were the presenters.

For those of you interested in the handouts, here you go!

• John’s handouts in PowerPoint
• John’s outline in Word

The Fort Worth ISD is also requiring checks on volunteers for the Sam Rosen party. I just got this from Raymond:

Attached is the criminal background form for Ft Worth ISD. Please note that the form requires a valid picture ID. I have talked with Mr.. Charles McCarty at Fort Worth ISD and he verified they have to have the picture ID. They do accept a copy of the ID, cut out and attached to the form. He also stated that he had to have the SSN in order to do the check but that before the approved forms are forwarded to Sam Rosen for their files it will be blocked out by his office.

• UPDATED 11/17/2005! Completed forms should be faxed directly to FWISD at 817-871-2839

Thanks for all of you help. If you have additional questions, please call.

Raymond Shands 817-882-0141

Ever wonder why you’re hit up for a donation for door prize tickets when you show up to a chapter dinner?

Besides having a fun way to keep everyone involved to the end of the meeting, the Chapter uses the funds raised from these drawings to meet our annual contribution pledge to the Texas Credit Union Foundation .

Those funds are earmarked for the newspapers in education program in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. During the fall, for ten consecutive Wednesdays, the Star-Telegram runs a full page financial education lesson that is used in schools throughout our area. In fact, credit union employees often go out in to the classrooms as part of the program.

Please check out a Wednesday edition of the Star-Telegram, you’ll see a lesson as well as the recognition the chapter and foundation are getting every week.

To maximize our donations, member credit unions take turns donating prizes for the drawings and our preferred partners also often contribute door prizes. If you’d like more information contributing door prizes, contact Terrie Johnson.

On the web: National Endowment for Financial Education and

Star-Telegram Newpapers In Eduction

Our annual holiday parties at Sam Rosen Elementary in Fort Worth and Webb Elementary in Arlington are fast approaching. The chapter always gets great support from our members and partners in putting together these events.

Here’s the schedule:

• Dec 6 (morning) Party Prep at Sam Rosen
• Dec 7 (all day) Party at Sam Rosen
• Dec 13 (morning) Party Prep at Webb
• Dec 14 (all day) Party at Webb

We would really appreciate your support this year. Kathie Wood is in charge of gathering cash donations. Rita Dexter is coordinating the collection of tooth brushes and tooth paste. Vince Heimann is coordinating the donation of coats.

If you are interested in volunteering, Raymond Shands is scheduling voluteers for Sam Rosen and Sheleah Hughes is scheduling volunteers for Webb.

All volunteers for Webb must be approved in advance by the Arlington ISD. Click here for a copy of the volunteer form. The form has 3 pages, and the 3rd page is all that is required to be filled out. Please fill out the form and forward it to Sheleah Hughes. Her fax number is 817-273-5990. Turnaround time on the approvals is about two weeks so please get them in soon. You may also want to plan in advance for substitute volunteers by having them fill out the form as well.

Lastly, check the comments to this post for any subsequent information from the committees.

If you weren’t at Tuesday night’s well-attended chapter meeting at the Fort Worth Botanic Garden, you may not know:

• Theater Arlington’s Standing Room Only has a great Minnie Pearl impersonator (thanks, Raymond, for setting it up!),
• CUNA Mutual’s Little Man put down his umbrella for a rifle during WWII (thanks, Margaret, for sharing CUNA Mutual’s history with us!),
• And if you ever need an auctioneer and Pamela’s available, she’s got skills!

The cake auction raised $800 for the Texas Credit Union Foundation, and the entire meeting was a great way to celebrate International Credit Union Day.

If you’re a Fort Worth Chapter member, we hope you’ll enjoy your new website. We’re not finished yet, but we think this is a good starting point.

First, you may recognize the format of this homepage as a blog. As far as we can tell, the Fort Worth Chapter is the first CU chapter – at both the state and local levels – with a blog. If you’re unfamiliar with blogging (don’t worry if you’re not – this is cutting-edge stuff), some CU-related blogs include CUES Skybox, Open Source CU, and Verity Credit Union.

This site’s going to grow into much more than what you see now. In the upcoming months, we’re going to be adding:

• A more robust calendar tool (complete with meeting notices and reservations)
• Fort Worth Chapter Directory
• Preferred Partner Directory
• Chapter Officer Directory
• Scholarship Application

Let us know what you think so far. Feedback (yes, even negative feedback) is definitely encouraged, as are any questions and ideas for improvement.