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Rotarian of Year earned by Merritt
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The program concluded with outgoing club president Lesley Francis passing her president's lapel pin to incoming president Rich DeLong. - photo by Photo by Paul Floecker
By Paul Floeckher
Updated: Jun 29, 2015, 12:44 AM
Published: Jun 29, 2015, 12:52 AM

The week before Christmas last year, Teresa Merritt hosted the Rotary Club of Richmond Hill’s first Military Night Out at her local dance studio.

Merritt, fellow Rotarians and members of Merritt’s staff offered a night of free baby-sitting for military families, providing some much-appreciated free time to spouses who become single parents during deployments.

“One mom went and got a pedicure,” Merritt said. “One mom went and did all of her Christmas shopping because she has four kids. Another one was very pregnant and Dad was gone, and she just went home and wrapped presents because she didn’t have time to wrap presents.”

Meanwhile, the children were enjoying crafts, snacks, dancing and tumbling. The baby sitters watched nearly 70 children from 3-10 p.m. that day.

“It was a full evening,” Merritt said. “I think it was very successful.”

For that effort and many others, Merritt was honored Thursday as the Rotarian of the Year at the Rotary Club of Richmond Hill’s annual meeting at the City Center.

Every time Merritt was asked to give her time and effort to a Rotary service project, she “just dug deep and kept getting up and doing it again,” said outgoing club President Lesley Francis.

The Rotary Club also presented two awards to community leaders who are not members of the club. Lou Gambill accepted the Community Service Award, and Barbara Eloi received the Vocational Service Award.

Gambill, the owner of My Grandfather’s Place barbershop, was praised for his volunteer work with local recreation programs. He has coached numerous youth baseball teams and also provided uniforms and equipment.

“He really cares about the boys and girls in our baseball program in our community,” Rotarian Gene Durante said. “Lou was recently recognized as an outstanding volunteer in recreation for the entire state of Georgia.”

Fittingly, the man known around town as “Mr. Baseball” wore a baseball tie to the Rotary annual meeting. Gambill had a big smile on his face and his eldest son, Taylor, at his side as he accepted the award.

“I love working with the kids,” Gambill said. “It’s an important part of my life, and it always will be. I do it because I just enjoy doing it. It’s just in me.”

Durante described Eloi as “an inspiration to all of us” and “the epitome of the Rotary motto of 'service above self.'” Eloi is the resident care manager at The Suites at Station Exchange senior-living community.

“She creates and fosters a loving and caring relationship with the people she serves and their family members,” Durante said. “Barbara has a true passion for helping others. She never just meets standards; she always exceeds them by far.”

Eloi thought she was at the meeting merely as a guest of Suites at Station Exchange Executive Director Rich DeLong, who was being sworn in as the new Rotary president. But midway through the program, DeLong and Durante surprised her with the award presentation.

“I’ve never heard that many nice things said about me,” Eloi said with a laugh. “My heart was pounding.”

The night’s youngest honorees were two Richmond Hill High School graduates who received scholarships from Rotary.

Zach Balcomb earned the $2,000 Jay Gardner Scholarship and Max Makhinson received the $1,000 Mary Bean Scholarship. Makhinson is headed to Georgia Tech to study chemical engineering, while Balcomb said he will attend Davidson College and likely major in economics.

Club leaders gave an overview of the service projects from the past year, including Rotary International’s commitment to eradicate polio worldwide. The Rotary Club of Richmond Hill contributed more than $35,000 to various local causes over the last 12 months, according to club treasurer Brad Brookshire.

“It is about a lot more than lunch and a program,” Francis said. “It is about service above self.”

To see more photos from the Rotary awards and officer induction, visit community.bryancountynews.com/gallery.

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Later yall, its been fun
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Ted O'Neil
Updated: May 23, 2018, 6:03 PM
Published: May 23, 2018, 6:05 PM

This is among the last pieces I’ll ever write for the Bryan County News.

Friday is my last day with the paper, and come June 1 I’m headed back to my native Michigan.

I moved here in 2015 from the Great Lake State due to my wife’s job. It’s amicable, but she has since moved on to a different life in a different state, and it’s time for me to do the same.

My son Thomas, an RHHS grad as of Saturday, also is headed back to Michigan to play basketball for a small school near Ann Arbor called Concordia University. My daughter, Erin, is in law school at University of Toledo. She had already begun her college volleyball career at Lourdes University in Ohio when we moved down here and had no desire to leave the Midwest.

With both of them and the rest of my family up north, there’s no reason for me to stay here. I haven’t missed winter one bit, but I’m sure I won’t miss the sand gnats, either.

Shortly after we arrived here in 2015, I got a job in communications with a certain art school in Savannah for a few short months. It was both personally and professionally toxic and I’ll leave it at that.

In March 2016 I signed on with the Bryan County News as assistant editor and I’ve loved every minute of it. My “first” newspaper career, in the late 80s and early 90s, was great. But when I left it to work in politics and later with a free-market think tank, I never pictured myself as an ink-stained wretch again.

Like they say, never say never.

During my time here at the News, I’ve covered everything that came along. That’s one big difference between working for a weekly as opposed to a daily paper. Reporters at a daily paper have a “beat” to cover. At a weekly paper like this, you cover … life. Sports, features, government meetings, crime, fundraisers, parades, festivals, successes, failures and everything in between. Oh, and hurricanes. Two of them. I’ll take a winter blizzard over that any day.

Along the way I’ve met a lot of great people. Volunteers, business owners, pastors, students, athletes, teachers, coaches, co-workers, first responders, veterans, soldiers and yes, even some politicians.

And I learned that the same adrenalin rush from covering “breaking news” that I experienced right out of college is still just as exciting nearly 30 years later.

With as much as I’ve written about the population increase and traffic problems, at least for a few short minutes my departure means there will be one less vehicle clogging up local roads. At least until I pass three or four moving vans headed this way as I get on northbound I-95.

The hub-bub over growth here can be humorous, unintentional and ironic all at once. We often get comments on our Facebook page that go something like this: “I’ve lived here for (usually less than five years) and the growth is out of control! We need a moratorium on new construction.”

It’s like people who move into phase I of “Walden Woods” subdivision after all the trees are cleared out and then complain about trees being cut down for phase II.

Bryan County will always hold a special place in my heart and I definitely plan on visiting again someday. My hope is that my boss, Jeff Whitten (one of the best I’ve ever had), will let me continue to be part of the Pembroke Mafia Football League from afar. If the Corleone family could expand to Vegas, there’s no reason the PMFL can’t expand to Michigan.

But the main reason I want to return someday is about that traffic issue. After all, I’ll need to see it with my own eyes before I’ll believe that Highway 144 actually got widened.

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