The Knoxville Downtown Sertoma Club

Service To Mankind

Buy Tickets to Oktoberfest

Tom Reesor | Immigration and Naturalization | Oct 18th

Allie Harmon brought us one of his neighbors, Tom Reesor who works with immigration and naturalization.  I could have really used him many years ago.  We got a real education on why people come over the border and what is anything is being done about it or do we want them too.  Tom signed up right out of college and one of his first jobs was working with people who claimed to do the same job but didn’t get the same pay. He was sent to California and one complaint came from Loretta Swift (sp) who was starring on the television show MASH. She was not being paid as much as her male co-stars. He had to go through each script and determine the numbers of lines she was required to remember verses her male co-stars. Turns out, she was right, and they had to give her back pay of several thousand dollars. He had lots of stories and when asked if Mexicans who are held responsible for increases in high crime are guilty he stated they are guilty a lot of the time due to not being able to find employment and needing to feed their family. He went on to say they are willing to do work that we don’t want to do i.e. roofing, ditch digging, etc.

Oktoberfest

We have packed it away for another year and I can safely say “A good time was had by all”.  We need to give Brett and Caroline a great big Atta Boy for all the work and effort they put in to making the evening a success. I went over to help with set up and they were there when I arrived and there when I left. Also, we were lacking on people bringing brown bag items and Caroline had to go out and purchase items with her own money, so we would have something for each ticket sold. Shame on us!  Don’t know how long it will take for Andy to get all the figures together but we should make more money this year due to some items we have in stock that won’t need to be purchased again.  Don’t know where they found the band, but it is excellent and really knows their stuff.  Part of the evening’s entertainment is watching people play heads or tails and then there is the chicken dance.  For all who participated, thank you!

Record Keeping: Bob Rentenbach read the prayer and some volunteer from the Kiwanis led the pledge. Next week Terrell Kerr is responsible for the speaker, hope he knows this cause he didn’t tell me.  We didn’t have any visitors and Jim Thompson won the grid pick.