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NEWSLETTERS

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"Virginia State Coodinator's Annual Meeting Held in Roanoke"
Jack Tompkins, RVSC Exec. Dir.

Roanoke proudly hosted the Annual Virginia State-wide Meeting of SCI at our downtown Roanoke City Public Library on Friday, June 4th. Representatives from SCI national headquarters in Washington, D.C.; from Norfolk, Va. Beach, Hampton & Newport News in Tidewater; Richmond, Charlottesville, and Arlington in Northern Virginia; and Roanoke, of course, participated enthusiastically. Reps from Suffolk, Portsmouth, Fredicksburg, Henrico did not attend.

(l-r) Head table guests: Mayor David Bowers, Tom Lisk, Fred Blanton, Ruth Hodges Fraser, MMC / SCI State Coordinator & Mayor's Liaison, Sister Cities of Virginia Beach, meeting’s chairperson.

State Coordinator Ruth Fraser and State Secretary Kate Helwig presented an interesting and informative power-point program. The gist of their consensus: there are friends around Virginia so that every local program can readily consult to help deal with almost any conceivable sister cities’ conundrum, frustration, kerfuffle that might arise. None of us has to “reinvent the wheel” because another locality has probably had a similar experience and would be happy to share program-solving information. To emphasize the consensus, several helpful hand-outs were distributed and websites recommended. Adding to the mix, almost all of our own RVSC committees had attendees who had an opportunity to interact and share some stories about our local best practices and successes.

It was a special pleasure to have Tom Lisk, son of our late, beloved first Executive Director David K. Lisk, and now, in his own right, Tom is a new member of the Sister Cities International Board of Directors, just like his Dad represented Roanoke for 19 plus years. SCI Headquarters in DC sensed the importance of this meeting by sending two representative, SCI Treasurer Fred Blanton and SCI-D.C. Membership Director Laura Giroux. Both congratulated us on our RVSC program. Mayor Bowers welcomed all guests and shared some amusing stories about how Roanoke has been enriched by many opportunities to have international visitors come to Roanoke under the leadership of David Lisk, Dr. Roth and our RVSC chairpersons.

Getting to know our like-minded committees from across the state and sharing ideas was a realized worthwhile endeavor. Our own dedicated Michael Liew—a guru among us— has represented Roanoke at previous state meetings and also at the SCI annual conference in North Ireland in 2009. We thank him for doing the leg-work in arranging guest SCI friends come to Roanoke and get to know us better!

Visitors did have a lunch break to visit sites in our City Market area, i.e. Century Square with its 8 sculptured column and Friendship fountain with its arc of flags. Some had come to spend the night so they could enjoy the evening in our beautiful Star City! We all benefited --- we were/are all winners with stronger bonds of mutual respect.

Jack