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What's New
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fundraising activities
| White
House Christmas Ornament | OI Foundation
| |Theater Night | Christmas
Tree Sales
The Club offers a variety of types of trees all brought in fresh
from North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. An Optimist Club member
has visited all the sites from which trees are harvested to insure the
highest quality in trees.
The Arlington Optimist Club Christmas Tree Sales takes place on
the parking lot of the Wachovia Bank at 2213 North Glebe Road (the corner
of North Glebe and Lee Highway) in Arlington from the Saturday after Thanksgiving
until Christmas Eve.
The major
spring event of the Arlington Optimist Club is the Ed Loveless Memorial
Golf Tournament which takes place on the fourth Thursday of May at the
Washington Golf and Country Club. The tournament was founded in 1959 by
Optimist Charter Member Ed Loveless, who chaired the event for 37 years
until his death. The Arlington Optimist Club has since named the tournament
in honor of his memory and his untiring effort on behalf of the Club and
Arlington youth.
In addition to being a major fund-raising effort for the Optimist
Youth Fund, this tournament is an opportunity for avid golfers to test
their skills on the course. Both Optimist members and non-members traditionally
take part in this May event.
Look for the next Gold Classic on Thursday, May 26, 2005.
The authors have
made the following books available through the Arlington Optimist Club.
Each book will be personally authographed if the purchaser so desires.
The authors will donate a portion of the sales price to the work of the
Arlington Optimist Club. For information or to order any of the
books, write: Books@ArlingtonOptimist.org
(Prices do not include any relevant shipping charges.) "The
Sandscrapers: A Forgotten Navy" by
Griffin T. Garnett
The year is 1862. Caleb Parker, a Free Person of Color
and native of the western North Carolina highlands, is an unusual man.
He embodies the ultimate challenge of conscience: a Free Black Unionist
turned Confederate. This compelling story examines the most forgotten
and maligned soldiers of America's civil conflict, the Black Confederates.
Reconstructed Yankee is a powerful, meticulously researched fictional
biography tightly woven into actual historical events. (Hardcover
$20.00) "Hitler:
Stalin’s Stooge" and "The Great Technology Race"
by James B. Edwards
2005
White House Christmas Ornament The ornament is
gold-plated brass with a round ceramic stone that features an illustration
inspired by a period engraving of the South Front of the White House.
The color scheme and highly decorative wreath design are derived from
art objects in the collection at Lawnfield, the historic Garfield house
in Mentor, Ohio, including the family china, needlework, and historic
frames. The JAG
monogram on the ornament was styled after that used for Garfield's inaugural
The ornaments make
great stocking stuffers and keepsakes. Proceeds of ornaments purchased
throught the Arlington Optimist Club go to the Optimist International
Foundation for the core youth programs of Optimist clubs. Ornaments
through the club are $20. For information or ordering, contact:
Ornament@ArlingtonOptimist.org
The Optimist
International Foundation was organized as a non-for-profit 501(c)(3)
charitable organization in 1971 to allow tax deductible contributions
to be made for the purpose of providing support to the charitable, literary,
or educational purposes of Optimist International. It has the IRS identification
number of 23-7102928.
The mission of
the Foundation is to provide educational opportunities and charitable
assistance for boys and girls involved in Optimist programs. Since 1971,
more than $5 million in funding has been awarded by the Foundation. During
the 2000-2001 fiscal year, the Foundation funded programs to the tune
of $504,685. The major service programs funded include:
Over 1.5
million youth are served annually by programs funded by the Foundation.
The Foundation is dependent on support from Optimist clubs and individuals
who are members, the general public, businesses, and corporations. Supporters
have contributed over $6.5 million in the period 1992-1999.
Theater
Night
Theatre Night was successful in raising funds for the Optimist Youth
Fund, providing an enjoyable evening for the participants, and lending
support to Arlington’s own American Century Theater.
Arlington
County Fair
The 28th Arlington
County Fair will take place August 19-22, 2004 at the Thomas Jefferson
Community Center, 3501 South Second Street, on the corner of South Second
Street and Old Glebe Road in Arlington. Admission is free! Where
is the Fair?
The Arlington County Fair takes place inside and around the
Thomas Jefferson Community Center, 3501 South Second Street, on the corner
of South Second Street and Old Glebe Road in Arlington. The building also
includes the Thomas Jefferson Middle School and the Thomas Jefferson Theatre.
The building is very near the corner of Arlington Boulevard (US 50) and
Glebe Road.
What is the Fair?
The Arlington County Fair is an annual celebration of Arlington's
cultures and communities. It has many of the features of a traditional
county fair, and many other features reflecting Arlington's character,
diversity, talents, and strengths.
Food vendors
and various special contests and demonstrations take place on the sports
field just outside the gym.
When is the Fair?
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Each year from late November
until just before Christmas, the Arlington Optimist Club sells Christmas
trees and related products in an effort to raise funds for the many youth
programs the Club sponsors. This effort enjoys wide support among Arlingtonians
as evidenced by the over 1,600 trees which are sold each year. It provides
residents of Arlington an opportunity to help the Optimist Club raise
the funds necessary for the many Optimist programs benefitting the youth
of Arlington. Over the years, it has become the major revenue source for
the Optimist Youth programs.
The Christmas Tree sales program
is run totally by Optimist volunteers, with some assistance from
youth and parents of kids in Optimist sponsored clubs and activities.
It is a joyous time of the year, and Club members look forward to the
project. Although it involves many hours of outdoor work that is subject
to all types of weather, it is an opporunity to spread the Optimist philosophy
and is fulfilling knowing that the funds will benefit the youth of Arlington.
While primarily a fund-raiser,
the Christmas Tree program has an additional benefit in that Club members
get to interact with the general public. As individuals walk around selecting
the perfect tree for their home, they have an opportunity to learn more
about the Arlington Optimist Club and its work in the community. Some
shoppers have later joined the organization and taken their place on the
Christmas tree lot.
The 46th Annual Ed Loveless Golf Tournament
took place at the Washington Golf and Country Club on May 20, 2004. The
tournament included three flights of individual competition and one flight
played in a captain’s choice team format. Over $3,000 worth of prizes
were awarded to the golfer, with another twenty-six door prizes given
at the awards banquet.
This
is the first novel of Arlington Optimist Club Charter Member Griff Garnett.
It is an adventure novel dealing primarily with a small segment of the
amphibious forces of the U.S. Navy during World War II. The volume
narrates the loves, intrigues, adventures, successes, failures, lives
and deaths of certain crew members aboard a small ship in the little-known
and unheralded "Landing Ship Medium (LSM) Program." The
story begins at the Charleston, South Carolina Navy Yard, moves on to
the Little Creek Amphibious Base at Norfolk, Virginia, and from there
through the southwest Pacific theatre of war. The novel ends in
the metropolitan area of Washington, D.C. Though the identified
ship, its nomenclature, and its crew are fictional, the class of ship
was factual. (Paperback $17.00)
"Taboo
Avenged" by Griffin T. Garnett
"Reconstructed
Yankee"
In
Hitler: Stalin's Stooge, the author tells us how Stalin was the
“eminence gris” behind the rise of Hitler and the Nazis to
power. Stalin envisioned World War II as a replay of World War I, in which
the Europeans would destroy each other and be ripe for conquest. Stalin
planned to defeat Hitler in a massive surprise attach; Hitler preempted
him by two weeks. In The Great Technology Race, the author
explains how strength and leadership in the world are no longer measured
by a nation's land mass or natural resources but by technology. In simple
language, he describes the arenas of competition. (Paperbacks: A
$22.90 value - both books for $13.00)
The
2005 White House Christmas Ornament, developed by the White House Historical
Association, is the 25th in the series. The 2005 ornament honors
President James A. Garfield, a preacher, educator, soldier, and politician.
The last of the log cabin presidents, he attacked political corruption
and restored a measure of prestige the presidency had lost during the
Reconstruction period.
ball
decorations, which now hang at Lawnfield. The pattern on the 2005 ornament
box is based on high Victorian flocked wallpaper in the Garfield house.
While proceeds from Theatre Night contribute
to the Optimist Youth Fund for the many youth programs of the Arlington
Optimist Club, Theatre Night is much more than a fund-raiser. It is an
opportunity for Club members and non-members to share an evening of fun
and culture. It is also an opportunity to support local theatres.
The 2001 Theatre Night took place on
May 5 at the Gunston Arts Center in Arlington. The performance of the
American Century Theater was exclusively for members and guests of the
Arlington Optimist Club. That evening’s performance was of Hotel
Universe, a 1930 play by Philip Barry, better known for his plays
Holiday and The Philadelphia Story. The play takes place
on the terrace of a house in the south of France, near Toulon in early
July 1929. Guests at a mysterious Riviera estate find themselves confronting
the failures of their pasts and the promise of their futures, prompted
by the mystical pwoers of an old man and the supernatural aura of the
house itself.
The evening began with a reception of
pastry and fruit in the garden outside of Gunston Arts Center. After the
show, refreshments were again served as a drawing was held for door prizes.
After the cast of Hotel Universe had an opporunity to change, they came
back on stage to discuss the play with the guests and to answer any questions
about the play or the American Century Theater.
As part of its community involvement, the Optimist
Club of Arlington takes part in the annual