Thinking About Giving Back to Your Favorite Club?

As we approach the autumn of our lives, we begin to reassess our accomplishments. First, we remember the biggest successes of our careers and then we wonder: Did I do all I could to help others? What am I going to do with all this time now that I’ve settled into an “age restricted” community? Could I help others to learn something new? The answer is “yes,” because you are “diamonds in the rough.”

The Sun Lakes Rock, Gem & Silver Club hopes you are interested in serving with one of the very largest and best clubs in Sun Lakes. Positions are offered to those who reside within Sun Lakes. Among the elective positions are four officers (president, vice president, treasurer, and secretary), five craft chair positions (lapidary, silver, lost wax, glass, and creative crafts), and four additional elective positions (class coordinator, membership coordinator, museum curator, and equipment oversight manager). Note: Only the 13 elective positions are eligible to vote as members of the board. Additional non-elective positions are assistant craft chairperson, instructor, and open shop monitor. Additional appointive positions are hospitality coordinator, publicity coordinator, website coordinator, raffles coordinator, and field trip coordinator.

You don’t have to be the VP, the secretary, or the treasurer, but it’s great background for becoming president! Here’s our website: slrgs.com. Just let us know where you’d like to help out. See the history below on how one Sun Laker gave back to his favorite club.

Henry William Huss was born in the Fall of 1933 in Lakewood, N.J. Graduating from Lakewood High School, he and his brother played on the varsity basketball team. He was lead choir member in his grandfather’s church, and for six summers, he spent time working as a “handy boy” in the Pocono Mountains in Bushkill, Pa. In 1951 he started working for Uncle Sam at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center in Chicago. Four years were spent in Naval Aviation working on aircraft carrier fighters. This stint got him a free ride to college in Trenton, N.J., to study business education, immediately after which he was hired to teach at a high school in Mount Holly, N.J. He spent 31 years in education, climbing the ladder as adult school director to principal to assistant superintendent. For 15 years, he and his wife Henrietta (“Henny”) spent summers in Ocean City, Md.

In 2000 they relocated to Ironwood in Sun Lakes, as snowbirds “loving the links.” He also joined the Sun Lakes Rock, Gem & Silver Club and began teaching dichroic glass fusing. After taking a silver class, he started teaching woven wire bracelets and wire-wrapped glass. That summer they sold their home in New Jersey to be fulltime Sun Lakers. Just recently, he and Henny downsized from IronOaks to Robson Reserve. Henry says, “Our new apartment is smaller and, as a result, I have donated one of my special stained-glass pieces to the club for an auction item.” Look for it at the Nov. 21 Rock Club general meeting in the Cottonwood Phoenix Room at 10 a.m.