Supreme Chief

Sheila A. Stooksberry

It is hard to believe that I have only 6 short months left as your Supreme Chief. I have enjoyed making many new friends that I never would have met if I did not belong to the Pythian Sisters.

As of now, in the next 6 months, I will be visiting Nevada, Oklahoma, the Prairie Provinces, Utah, Ontario, California, New Mexico, Arizona, & West Virginia. As of December 31, 2009, I have traveled over 55,000 miles. I also plan to visit temples in New Jersey & Tennessee if we can work out a date.

November 15th was my birthday and it was bittersweet. On this day, our PSC Elnora Gorman, who passed away on November 11th, was laid to rest and my dear friend PSR Patricia Cummins, National PST Chairperson, died very suddenly. This date I will always remember! As of this writing, I have received word of the passing of PSC Sara "Sally" Schramm on February 4, 2010. We have lost some very special Pythian Sisters!!

2010 SUPREME TEMPLE. Our Supreme Temple Convention will be held at the LA Airport Hilton in Los Angeles, California from August 7-11, 2010. The schedule is in this issue of the PS Tidings along with banquet information. There is a free shuttle from the airport to the hotel. The price for 1-4 people in a room will be $135.75 which includes taxes. More information will be given out later. I hope that we will have a large number of Sisters in attendance at our sessions. If you can plan to spend an extra day, there are a lot of things to see.

MEMBERSHIP. As reports are starting to come in, there are losses, many due to death. But we are not taking in new members to take their places. We need to find new members somewhere whether they are relatives, friends, acquaintances from other organizations, neighbors, etc. Then after we get in these members, those of us who have belonged forever need to encourage these new members to attend our meetings and listen to their ideas. We need to keep an open mind!!!! As I said before, work on retaining our current members. Maybe by showing that we are interested in retaining them as a member, we will be able to keep them and help them to become active members of our temples.

VOLUNTEERISM. Here again, hours are not being sent in for our Sisters that have donated their time in their communities. As of the end of 2009, the Sisters have about 103,000 hours reported for the US and Canada. Our hours combined with the Knights only give us a little over 263,000 hours total - a long way from 2 MILLION. Please send these hours in to the chairpersons or if you have any questions, please feel free to ask me.

WAYS AND MEANS. The Supreme Temple Ways and Means Committee still has angel pins for sale for $5.00. The pins are a white angel holding purple violets with a lavender background. A picture of them was in our last PST issue. These pins would make excellent gifts to your loved ones for holidays, birthdays or just to show a friend that they are special. Please purchase these to help out our Supreme Temple treasury. You can contact Audrey Wetterwald, Supreme Junior, who can fill your order. You will also be receiving tickets from Audrey for a 50/25/25 drawing and a quilt raffle in the near future. The quilt is in beautiful shades of purple and was made by PSC Audrey Compton and her husband, Lee.

Best wishes to everyone for a healthy 2010 - I hope that this will be a year of growth!!

PYTHIAN SISTERS Information