Recently Rita Buzzard was honoured by the OFBDC achieving life membership for her valued and long service to the club. Rita, along with her husband Brian joined the Over 50s in July 2013. She became a member of the First Aider’s group in 2016, before joining the Volunteers in November of 2018. Rita took on the onerous task of raffle coordinator in September of 2017 which she has fulfilled in a friendly, efficient and capable manner.

An elderly gentleman introduced himself, asked for a dance while Brian was otherwise occupied and as they say the rest is history.

The committee decided to make presentations to two of their members as a mark of outstanding service. As an independent non-committee member, I was asked to write an article on these presentations. The first presentation was to Marrilyn Spencer, our Dance Co-ordinator who received a large bouquet of flowers in recognition of her excellent service to the club which included 7 years on the committee.

The second presentation was to our President, Trevor Hook who received a life membership in recognition of his excellent service to the club. Trevor is continuing as President for at least another year. Trevor, who started working as a committee “helper” quickly rose to become President. He has not avoided the challenge of updating our outdated or non-existent club protocols and has inspected and/or resolved other issues such as club insurance. Early in his Presidency, he was faced with the reality of a Covid-19 Pandemic and the devastating effect of a number of lockdowns. However, when the going gets tough, the tough get going. Trevor with the help of our dedicated committee has successfully steered us through what (we hope) is the worst of the interruptions. Trevor’s life membership is well deserved.

Charles Todd (Webmaster Over 50s Ballroom Dancing Club)

Valmai Farthing has been a member of our club almost since its inception over 27 years ago. She has done a fantastic job for our club in various roles, including almost 15 years as secretary. Valmai was recently sidelined by illness for quite a few weeks and while she is well again now, has decided it is time to reduce her workload. Therefore, Valmai has formally resigned from the position of Secretary having previously been awarded Life Membership for service to our club as well as recently receiving a badge recognizing 25 years of continuous membership.

Valmai has always capably and enthusiastically fulfilled the duties required of her position(s). In particular, she loves the contact with members and friends at dances and was reluctant to take this step for fear of losing this contact.

To counter that, she will continue to be one of our ”Entry / Raffle Desk supervisors” and will do this every time we dance at Karrinyup.

She will also continue to arrange rosters for the members who serve on the Desk. Both activities will help to keep her in contact with many of the members and friends she has made at this club.

Valmai, therefore, retains a smaller role but she is not going anywhere as she now becomes a member of our volunteer team.

A huge Thank You to Valmai for all she has done, and continues to do, for our club. In recognition, Valmai was presented with a bouquet of flowers and given resounding applause by the 120 club members present as the award was given.

Your Committee dealt with this at our most recent meeting. Our Constitution defines the process for filling such mid-term vacancies, so:-

In accordance with Item 9. of the Over 50s Ballroom Dancing Club Inc. Constitution, the committee accepted the resignation of Valmai Farthing from the position of Secretary, and as described in item 9.2, Kathy Herbu was appointed to this position. This appointment will continue until the 2020 Annual General Meeting in August.

We know Kathy will make a great member of the team and wish her well in that enterprise.

Trevor Hook (President)

Marrilyn Spencer has been a member of Over 50s since July 2005. In 2014 she became our dance coordinator and has always toiled long and hard to provide balanced dance programs to please members. In addition, she produces flyers and creates entry tickets for all our special dances and when needed, assists other committee members with documentation such as compiling all documentation for the AGM.

Marrilyn is a very approachable, active member whose considered, thoughtful comments on topics raised at committee discussions have often become the basis of decisions made. Enthusiastic and dedicated are descriptions which fit Marrilyn well. She has always been a pleasure to have on our committee and I am pleased this is to continue another year.

Deborah Sharp has been a member of Over 50s since May 2006 and took over the role of Membership Secretary in 2014. This is a hands-on role at the first point of contact for visitors and the keeper of the register. Deb is very friendly and informative, dealing with enquiries or new subscriptions as they happen and every June, July, August is busy collecting renewals. As with all committee, she commits time after-hours arranging things like membership cards, name badges, updating the database records etc.

As a committee member Deb is a concerned participant who makes very useful suggestions to assist the group define its decisions and directions. Her attention to detail and willingness to help are two of Deb’s traits which are very much welcomed on our committee, as is her decision to continue to 2020.

As of August 2019, Marrilyn and Deb became Life Members of Over Fifties Ballroom Dancing Club Inc. and very well deserved. 

On behalf of all club members I congratulate and offer a sincere Thank You to you both, for jobs well done. 

This club has had the benefit of some great teams over the years and the efforts of two such couples were also highlighted at the AGM. All four of these members were awarded life membership in 2013 but their service to our club has continued way beyond that time so we feel it is appropriate that we again highlight their commitment to our club. One such team is  Pauline and Albie Apletree who joined this club in February 2000. They became volunteers within about 18 months and have now been looking after members needs for some 18 years. They are stalwarts of our club but have now decided it is time to let others step up. Thursday 8th August at Karrinyup was their last regular day as volunteers. 

Methodical, reliable, and always great fun to work along-side, their cheery personas will be missed by the other volunteers. We will, of course, continue to see them every week as regular dancers. A fitting testament for their commitment to this club is that they have said “Call us if you need someone to fill occasionally.” A big thank you to Pauline and Albie.

Another team is Corinne and Bob Patching who have been members for 20 years having joined in July 1999. Their time as regulars on the volunteer group began not long after joining and lasted nearly fifteen years until August 2014 when they decided it was time to call it a day. While they continued to be regular dancers, they have also always been the ‘go-to’ couple when other volunteers could not make it.

A very genuine couple with disarming senses of humour and a ‘let’s just get on with it’ approach to setting up, sorting afternoon tea, and packing away always made working along-side of them a very pleasant experience.  

Congratulations and thank you, Corinne and Bob.

 At the 2018 AGM two long-standing committee members were honoured with life membership. Our incumbent President Trevor Hook penned the following comments on their excellent work for the club.  

John Kember joined the Over 50s in November 2009 and in 2013 joined the committee as Vice President.
The next year he was elected to President and has held this position until today.
I am sure all of you know John as very approachable and I can tell you his leadership on the committee has been pretty much the same. He always encouraged cooperation and good planning and I think the great success of the last three annual balls is testament to his effectiveness.
Congratulations John and thank you for your efforts over the last five years. Now you can relax and have every dance on Thursdays if you wish.

Patricia McOscar joined Over 50s in April 2002.
In 2003 she became club secretary. She did this for two years, in support of presidents Jack Cassidy then Ken Atkinson.
Some years later, in 2012 Patricia took on the role of Vice President to Roy Scott and followed up the following year as our property and purchasing officer. This she has done for four years, right up to today.

I am sure Patricia performed all these roles with the same thoughtfulness and dedication I have witnessed for the last two years. This last role involved a lot purchasing of various items but probably the most tangible thing members might be grateful for is never running out of coffee/tea or biscuits.

Another is a side role she adopted. That is, arranging group bookings for various musical theatre shows for the last few years. Not a committee role, just something she wanted to do and many members have enjoyed the benefit of her efforts.

Patricia, congratulations, and on behalf of all members, thank you for all you have done for this club in your eight years on the committee. You certainly have pulled your weight.

We wish you well and hope we continue to have your company way, way into the future.

 The Club Treasurer, Frank, made the Christmas address in the absence of The President. During his address, Frank made presentations to three people, Pat Taylor,  Deb Sharp, and Arthur Spencer, all of whom have made a significant contribution to the success of the Over 50s Club.

The President wrote the following accolades for the three recipients.

This year Pat Taylor passed the twenty-year mark as our very talented dancing teacher. How Pat manages to teach, persuade, encourage, cajole more than 100 people into learning a new dance in only two weeks is a bit beyond me. Nevertheless, we are extremely grateful for her tireless efforts in getting us into dancing shape, and she does this while continuing to remain her usual calm, cheerful, talented self. Thank You Pat for more than 20 years of service, which has been very much appreciated by all. We hope your partnership with this club continues for some time to come.

Recently your committee decided, on members’ behalf, that today would be a good opportunity to thank one of our most reliable and visible committee members. This person knows just about every member well and has information stored away in her card files, on the computer, and in her head. As support for myself, she can mostly find exactly what I need to know when something crops up. The person to whom I refer is Deb Sharp our membership secretary. Deb had a bit of a medical rough trot last year but fought through that and missed very little time at dances. She continued to support members with their queries, or registration and has generally been a main player as ‘the face of our club’.

Thank You Deb for doing a big job so willingly and smoothly regardless of circumstances. We love to see you looking after us so well.

Another person I wish to mention is Arthur Spencer. We specially invited Arthur so he would have an opportunity to catch up with many of the OFBDC members. These are some of the many people for whom he has played his lovely music, both here and at other dances. Arthur has now retired from being our music provider at Karrinyup. There is no doubt everyone has pleasant memories of you and your music, Arthur, so we could not let your retirement go unnoticed. We have created a Plaque as a token of our appreciation which we hope will be a constant reminder of your many years of providing music for our Thursday dances at Karrinyup.

We hope each time you look at the plaque you will be reminded of the many people you know and the many fun times we had together over the years.  

 Pat Taylor and Deb Sharp were presented with a bouquet of flowers and Arthur was presented with a plaque.