Golden K installs officers, gives awards

Members, spouses and guests of Kiwanis Club of Appleton, Golden K, recently gathered for a dinner meeting to install new officers for the next year.

New officers are president Wil Ayers, president-elect Carol Fischer, vice president Jack Verbockel, secretary Chuck Bruhn, treasurer Fred Mataczynski, assistant treasurer Jerry Thiel and past president Bill Brandt.

Appreciation awards in recognition of outstanding and devoted service were given to Bob Willer, Ray Kaufman, Jack Verbockel, Dick Goree, A.J. Selig and Becky Mataczynski.

Kiwanis elects new leaders at meeting

The Appleton Fox Cities Kiwanis, with 78 members, raised more than $45,000 from October 2008 through September for children's projects.

A partial list of recipients includes the Building For Kids, Children's Hospital of Wisconsin-Fox Valley, Salvation Army, the Housing Partnership of the Fox Cities, the Emergency Shelter, Habitat for Humanity, the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Fox Valley and the Community Clothes Closet.

New officers who were elected at the 37th Annual Meeting on Sept. 25 are president Jay Stephany, president-elect Sara Schnell and secretary Debi Bartell. Immediate past president is Ann Marie Koleske, and treasurer is Linda Breitzman.

Club member Kurt Eggebrecht received the Kiwanian of the Year award for demonstrating outstanding service to the club and to the community. Linda Breitzman and Jay Stephany received the George F. Hixson Fellowship Award, a Kiwanis International award presented to a Kiwanian who has gone above what is expected.

Teen wins music award

Appleton composer Chelsea Komschlies, 18, a freshman at Wartburg College in Iowa, won the $750 prize in the Young Composer Competition held earlier this year by the MacDowell Club of Milwaukee.

The award also included a world premiere of her composition at the MacDowell Club's concert at 3 p.m. Oct. 25 at Cardinal Stritch University in Fox Point. Flutist Marie Sander and the Whitefish Bay High School Bel Canto choir will perform the work.

Komschlies, who was 17 and a senior at Fox Valley Lutheran High School at the time she submitted "The Call of the Land," scored the work for four-part voice with flute obbligato. For the text, she used two poems of William Butler Yeats, "The Stolen Child" and "Song of the Happy Shepherd."

"Yeats' verses lament that Ireland has lost that feeling of myth and wonder," Komschlies wrote. "My piece is about Ireland pleading with its people to return to their roots and heritage."