PLEASE NOTE - This page is designed to be a chronological history of Unit 112 with the most recent activities at the top of the page. To learn about our activities from the time we were rechartered in 2008, please read from the bottom. We hope that you will enjoy learning about our unit and that you might consider joining us. For more information about joining our unit, please contact Nell Colbert.


2010-2011


We kicked off our Give 10 to Education School Supply Drive in mid-July. We have collection boxes placed at Walgreens Pharmacies in Winter Park, Goldenrod and other East Orlando locations as well as at the Goldenrod Chamber of Commerce and American Legion Post 112 located on North Goldenrod Road.

 

July 13th was a very special day for Unit 112. The 6th District President, Diane Anderson, and her installation team came to our unit meeting to install our 2010-2011 officers. We also had another very special guest - Grafton Day, a Vista volunteer who is working for the Auxiliary at the national office came to visit our unit as she explores how units use technology. Grafton brought everyone pins from President Rita and presented the units with a new American Flag that flew over the Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day. Grafton got to see one of the Post's officers, Dyke Shannon, take his oath of office remotely. Dyke was out of town and participated in our festivities via teleconference using Skype.


WOW! Our Give 10 to Education school supply drive was a HUGE success! Not only did we receive a donation of 50 backpacks from Costco Wholesale, we also received cash donations from Target and members of the Goldenrod Chamber of Commerce! With the cash donations and all of the supplies donated at our collection sites at East Orlando and Winter Park Walgreens stores, we will be able to completely fill every backpack with crayons, colored pencils, glue, pencils, notebooks, paper and a whole lot more! Thank you Central Florida for your generous support of those children whose families cannot afford to provide them with the bare essentials needed for a successful start of this school year.


August 16th saw our ladies sorting through mounds and mounds of school supplies so that we could stuff our donated backpacks chock full of school supplies. Each backpack ended up with at least 5 duotang folders, a box of crayons, colored pencils, a spiral notebook, a big package of notebook paper, a box of 12 pencils, a package of pens, a bottle of glue and a couple of glue sticks. Next year, we want to do even more backpacks!


Talk about appreciative - on August 17th, Nita, Johanna, Liz and Nell delivered stuffed backpacks to Cheney and Little River Elementary Schools. We got a wonderful reception from the administrators at both schools who promised to deliver the backpacks to military families in need at their schools. We also delivered two big boxes of school supplies to the Reserve Center for their Family Readiness Program.

 

September 9th, 2010 saw Nita, Liz and Nell back at Cheney Elementary. This time, we were teaching proper flag handling to the 20+/- Safety Patrols at the school. We taught these young people what each fold in the flag means as they learned how to fold the American flag. Each person got to fold the flag before we moved over to the flag pole to practice raising and lowering the flag. It is really sad that flag etiquette is apparently no longer taught in our elementary schools but that gives Auxiliary and Legion members a great opportunity to be involved in our schools.


September is going to be very busy for Unit 112! Our regular business meeting will take place on 9/14 at the Post on North Goldenrod and then we will attend the 6th District School of Instruction on 9/18 followed by our annual Planning Conference on Sunday afternoon (9/19.) In addition, we'll be supporting the Posts monthly pancake breakfast and "Burgers and More" luncheons and conducting our first fundraiser and membership drive for 2010-2011 at Friendly's Restaurant on 9/22.


The School of Instruction on 9/18 was fantastic with Nita, Liz, Johanna and Nell attending. We learned so much that will help us with our programs this year.

 

Our planning conference on 9/19 was awesome thanks to Nita who opened her home for our whirlwind afternoon. We used all of the information we learned at the School of Instruction to help us plan some outstanding projects for this year.


We hope everyone will join us at Friendly's Restaurant on Wednesday September 22nd from 5-8pm for our combination membership recruitment night and fundraiser. We will have a table in the lobby of the restaurant where we will distribute information about the Auxiliary and the Legion to customers. During the evening, our talented President Nita will entertain the diners with her ventriloquism. The restaurant, which is located on University Blvd. just outside of the UCF campus, will be donating about 20% of the sales that night to our Unit to support our projects this year.

 

Talk about an awesome night! There were lots of guests at Friendly’s and we had a blast at our first fundraiser for the year. Everyone really enjoyed Nita's puppets and we gave out lots of information about the American Legion and the Auxiliary. Thanks to Nita, Nell and Johanna for manning our table, greeting the restaurant guests and entertaining the kids. We had so much FUN that we've already booked out next FUN night for November.

 

If it's October, it must be time for our annual community food drive to support military families and the community through the Boy Scout Scouting for Food service project. Our boxes are out in Walgreens stores in Winter Park, Goldenrod and east Orange County as well as the Goldenrod Chamber of Commerce and Post 112. Please drop off your non-perishable food items between October 2nd and November 5th. And October is also the month for our annual Membership Luncheon at the Olive Garden in Winter Park. Please join us on October 3rd at 1:30pm for great food and conversation while you learn a little about our Unit. And what would October be without supporting the Post 112 annual Yard and Arts & Crafts Sale on 10/23 and the children's Halloween Party on 10/31. Lots of fun!


This month we also kicked off our coupon drive for our families at the Reserve Center by dropping off about $1500 in coupons. The coupons are all sorted by type and placed in two sorters to make it easy for the families to find what they need. This is an on-going project and if you would like to help please drop off your un-needed cents-off coupons at Post 112.


WOW! What great community support! We spent several hours on November 6th sorting the food from our food drive. We assembled two huge food baskets for our Reserve Center friends in need and still had several hundred pounds of food left for the Scouting for Food project to support Second Harvest Food Bank.


We purchased the gift cards to go in our holiday food baskets for the active duty families and delivered the baskets to the Reserve Center in mid-November. Special thanks to the soldiers on duty at the Reserve Center for helping to move the giant (and very heavy) baskets from the car into the building. We also dropped off another $1500 in coupons for the military families. Wishing our active duty families a very Happy Thanksgiving and a Merry Christmas. We hope that you will put the items in the baskets to good use.


And if it's Veterans Day, it means Poppy's. Our Unit distributed Poppies for the very first time this year. While we didn't give away all that we ordered, we did pretty well for our first time. We're looking forward to Memorial Day for our second round of Poppy booths. Thanks to Sam's Wholesale and Walgreens for allowing us to distribute Poppies outside their stores.


It's National Education Week and this year we are supporting the faculty and staff at Cheney Elementary. Every day during the week we took goodies to the school and on Tuesday, Nita and Liz presented a special program on bullying at the after school program. Muffins, bagels and cream cheese, a huge fruit basket, donuts and more to support the teachers and staff at the school during the week of 11/15-19.


Our second Friendly's FUN Night fundraiser was a great success! November 17th saw Nita and Nell manning our booth at Friendly's - Nita painting the faces of all the children and Nell greeting guests as they arrived. Thanks to everyone who came out to support our fundraiser. Our next date will be February 16th. So far, we've raised enough money to fund our food baskets and National Education Week projects as well as purchase our Poppies for Veterans Day.

 

November also saw Marge, Nita and Nell at the Department of Florida Fall Conference the weekend of 11/19 - 21. Lots of great information on membership and finance. The best part, though, was making new friends, networking and learning about the programs being done in other Units.


December saw our Unit making great use of the information received at the Fall Conference. We have now filed for our Solicitors Permit and have also filed with the Department of Revenue to collect and report/pay sales tax. We also made application to become a Tax-Exempt organization in Florida.


Our Unit is growing - by the middle of December; we have reached 14 members or 87% of our membership goal for 2011. We need two more members to reach 100%.


Mid-December saw some sad days for our Unit as we lost one of our newest members and the mother and grandmother of two of our members went home to be with their Lord. Our condolences to Grafton, Debi and Staci and their families. Our Unit celebrated the lives of Marilyn and Catherine in January with a Charter draping ceremony.


We are so excited! This year, Unit 112 will send its first young woman to Girls State this summer and January kicked off our Girls State project. Nita, Marge and Johanna visited Winter Park, Lake Howell and Oviedo High Schools and Trinity Preparatory School to speak with guidance counselors about the Girls State program in early January. The schools will identify up to two candidates for us to interview at the end of February.


Its official - Unit 112 is officially permitted by the FL Dept. of Agriculture to solicit donations and we have also been issued tax ID # so that we can collect and report sales tax. The last piece of the puzzle is our tax-exempt certification. The paperwork has been filed with the state of Florida and we await their response.

 

February 17th found Nell, Marge, Johanna and Nita at Friendly's for our third FUN night at the UCF Friendly's. Nita entertained again with her puppets while Nell, Marge and Johanna greeted the guests. We had a great turn out from the community and even some of our Post members came out to support our fundraising efforts. We'll be back in April on the 20th to help the Easter bunny deliver Easter eggs to the kids.


On February 27th, Nell, Marge, Debi and Nita gathered at Post 112 to interview four outstanding young women for Girls State. These candidates were awesome and it was very difficult to choose just one candidate and one alternate. Congratulations to Tracy from Winter Park High and Anna from Trinity Prep. We hope that we'll be able to raise enough money to be able to send two girls next year.

 

On March 5th Nita attended the 6th District ALA meeting and picked up lots of great information about the new format for the 2011 annual reports that she shared at our March meeting.

 

Its official - Unit 112 is now officially exempt from paying Florida sales tax.

 

Our March Unit meeting featured a special guest. Andrea Rodriguez talked with us about a local military unit with about 300 soldiers that was recently deployed to a base in Afghanistan that has not yet been fully built. The base has no PX or Commissary so the soldiers have to purchase their personal hygiene items and other items they need from the local stores. As a result, they pay about $4 for a simple tube of lip balm, $9 for a small bottle of shampoo, etc. They go without much of the things we take for granted. Unit 112 asked other Units in the 6th District to support our efforts to collect items for this unit to help them until their on-base stores are built. Our March meeting also featured our 6th District President, Diane Anderson, as our guest. Diane presented our monthly training segment dealing with the new annual report.


Congratulations to Unit 112! At our April meeting, Aunita shared that our Unit was named the Cheney Elementary School Partner in Education of the Year for 2011 and was nominated as the Orange County Schools Partner in Education of the Year for 2011. Our April meeting also saw a review of our Standing Rules and an update from our Nominating Committee as we prepare to elect our officers for 2011-2012. It's been a fun and fast paced year and we've got lots of fun serving our military families and our community.

 

April 20th saw Aunita, Johanna and Nell at the UCF Friendly's for our regular fundraiser. Thank you to all of our friends who came out to the restaurant to support our efforts to raise funds to ship goods to our adopted military unit in Afghanistan. And THANK YOU to Friendly's for giving us this fundraising opportunity. Mark your calendar for Thursday, June 9th and come join us at Friendly's for Flag Day!


What an AWESOME response! In March our Unit learned about a military unit that had been deployed to a new base in Afghanistan that had no shopping facilities for the soldiers to purchase basic personal hygiene and comfort items. With the help of many other Auxiliary Units in the 6th District, a semi-truck load of goods for this group of soldiers was donated by the community. Volunteers from the whole Legion family (Auxiliary members, Post members, Legion Riders and Sons of the Legion) came together to unload the trailer the week after Easter and then box up all the goods collected. More than $2,000 was donated by 6th District units to ship these goods to these soldiers.

 

May 7th saw Unit 112 members attend the 6th District annual Constitutional Conference. Aunita and Johanna were our delegates. Aunita presented our Presidents Report and Unit 112 was recognized for our Give 10 to Education School Supply drive and Backpacks for Students project that benefited Cheney and Little River Elementary Schools. Unit 112 also received a trophy for having the best VA & R project of the year because we were able to include many other Auxiliary Units in collecting supplies for a military unit deployed to Afghanistan and we involved the entire Legion family in the sorting and boxing of the items collected.

 

Our May meeting was our annual election on officers for 2011-2012. Congratulations to our new officers for next year:

 

Memorial Day means Poppies – we held our annual Poppy drive for Memorial Day on Friday, May 27th at the Walgreens on Lakemont Avenue at Aloma Avenue near the Winter Park Hospital. We also had Poppies at the Post 112 Fish Fry on Friday, May 27th.

 

Our very first Poppy Poster Contest was conducted in mid-May. The third, fourth and fifth grade students at Eastbrook Elementary created Poppy Posters for our contest and were recognized with ribbons for their efforts. The Poppy posters were on display at our Poppy booth on May 27th and at the Post 112 Memorial Day service that was held on Sunday, May 29th.

 

June means another FUN Night at the UCF Friendly’s Restaurant that will help us raise funds for our projects. This summer we will be assembling Reading Rockets packages for Eastbrook Elementary School and the funds raised at the June FUN Night will help offset the cost of the books needed for the packets. We hope that you will come out to Friendly’s on June 9th from 5-8pm to join us for dinner and help us raise the funds we need.

 

2009-2010

 

On September 8th, our unit installed our newly elected officers: Nancy Travers, President; Nell Colbert, Secretary-Treasurer and Nita Padgett, Chaplain. 6th District President Jill Lux and her installation team attended our event that was held in conjunction with the Post 112 installation of its officers.

 

On September 20th, our unit held its first Meet and Greet Membership luncheon at the Olive Garden Restaurant in Winter Park where we welcomed a number of new members.


The Auxiliary will be holding its annual planning conference on Saturday, October 3rd at the Post beginning at 9am. Please join us for coffee and donuts and help us plan our year.

 

The first community service project for our Auxiliary, a food drive, will kick-off on Monday, October 5th. Collection boxes will be placed at the American Legion Post on Goldenrod Road, the Goldenrod Chamber of Commerce, several Walgreens locations around the Winter Park-Goldenrod area as well as at several Winn Dixie and CVS Pharmacy locations. The collection boxes will be in place until Monday, November 9th after which the food collected will be donated to the Second Harvest Food Bank through the Central Florida Council Boy Scouts of America Scouting for Food project. Please support this very vital project for our community.


Our first annual planning conference held on 10/3 was AWESOME! We got so much accomplished in a few short hours that we were all amazed. Not only did we review the Plans of Action for 2010, we also made the posters that will go on our food drive collection boxes that go out next week. We also identified and calendared a number of projects that we really want to do this year. Our activities for the rest of 2009 and 2010 will include supporting the Post 112 Halloween and Easter children's activities, assembling gift food baskets for both Thanksgiving and Christmas that will go to needy Veteran or active duty military families, the Pocket Flag project in early 2010, the Reading Rockets project and the Give 10 to Education projects in January and February, organizing a community CERT training for April, hosting a community blood drive in March and repeating our food drive next fall. We will also actively be recycling to support the Posts Sea Cadets throughout the year and beginning a coupon clipping program to support local Veteran and active duty military families. We also want to participate in the Poppy Program for Memorial Day and Veterans Day in 2010 and next fall we will be getting out to the schools early to promote the essay contests in addition to a fall 2010 school supply drive. We also began to identify some fund raising opportunities that will help us provide the supplies needed for these projects along with being able to send a young woman to Girls State. 2010 is going to be an exciting year for Unit 112! We are so very proud of all of the wonderful ladies who participated in our planning conference and who are committed to making our unit and post projects successful.


The Posts annual fall Yard and Craft sale in mid-October was a huge success and all the baked goods at our bake sale sold very quickly. The weather was awesome. The only thing that would have made the day better would have been more baked goods - we ran out too early!

 

Lots of ghosts and goblins invaded the Post on October 31st for the Post's annual children's Halloween party. The kids had a great time going through the haunted house and they all enjoyed their bag of treats. Thanks to Nita, Liz and Nell for supporting the annual Post Halloween party for the Goldenrod area children.

 

Our Unit's very first service project, our food drive, is going great guns and lots of food is being donated by the community. The collection boxes will be picked up between 11/9 and 11/10 and the Unit will sort the food items at the Unit meeting on November 10th. The food we collect will be turned over to the Central Florida Council BSA Scouting for Food project on 11/14. This has been an awesome project for our Auxiliary Unit and a great help to the community. Special thanks to Nita, Deb, Johanna, Marian, Lillian and Nell for making all the signs for the collection boxes and to Nita and Nell for getting the collection boxes in place. A huge thank you to Walgreens, Costco, CVS, Winn Dixie and the Goldenrod Chamber of Commerce for allowing us to place collection boxes in their locations. We had boxes in twelve different sites for this food drive.


The November 2009 Unit meeting saw our members sort and box more than 1000 food items that were donated by the local community to our collection boxes. Our best guess is that we collected more than 400 pounds of food for the Second Harvest Food Bank.


The units second ever service project, assembling holiday food gift baskets for some reserve families in need of some help was also completed at the November meeting. The gift baskets held all the fixins for a complete holiday dinner plus a Winn Dixie gift card so the recipient families can pick up any additional items that they may need for their holiday dinner.

 

You have to check out our new polo shirts! We received our new unit polo shirts in November just in time to show them off at the fall conference. Boy do our members look FANTASTIC! Thanks Dyke for doing such a great job for us and for supporting our unit.


Our unit's Secretary-Treasurer, Nell Colbert, attended the fall conference and brought back lots of great information that our unit will put to great use. The conference was AWESOME and it is hoped that we can have more members in attendance at the June conference.

 

On November 18th, our unit supported Eastbrook Elementary School by providing a huge basket of fruit for their 100+ member faculty and staff in recognition of National Education Week and the Teach-in at the school.


In mid-December, we delivered our second holiday food gift basket to a reserve family needing some extra help this holiday season. As did the Thanksgiving basket, this one contained more than 75 items needed to prepare a great holiday meal along with a $25 Winn Dixie gift card.

 

Our unit also supported the Oviedo High School NJROTC Toys for Tots campaign by collecting and delivering bags and bags of toys donated by our unit members and members of Post 112 to the school in time for distribution to families in need during this holiday season. Thanks to all of our members along with the members of the Post for supporting one of our scouting units.


To celebrate the holiday season, we joined Post 112 members for a wonderful Christmas party at the Elks Club in mid-December. Great food and awesome fellowship!

 

As of 12/31, we are proud to have met 93% of our membership goal for 2009-2010. We gladly welcome eligible ladies who want to be involved in our projects.


Happy New Year! To kick off the New Year, we began work on revising our Constitution and By Laws so that they are ready for submission before the May Constitutional meeting. We are also working our plans to bring the Blood Mobile to the Post's Yard and Craft sale in March and to get our Reading Rockets service project together for Eastbrook Elementary School. We are also working on fund-raising and we continue to plan our upcoming school supply drive.

 

We made it!!! Unit 112 officially welcomed its 14th member in early February - we are now officially at 100% of our membership goal. We would love to add a few more dedicated, active members in the coming months. If you would like more information about joining our unit, please call Nell at 321.303.7445


Unit 112 is moving more into the 21st Century! We are considering making teleconferencing available to our members who cannot attend meetings in person. Please let Nell know what you think. If this is adopted, our membership will be able to participate in our regular monthly meetings either by calling in by phone or by logging in via their home computer.

 

Happy 100th Birthday to the Boy Scouts of America! February 8th is the date the BSA was officially begun and the American Legion has had a proud and supportive relationship with the Boy Scouts almost since its inception. Post 112 is a proud sponsor of Venturing Crews 50 and 56, the NJROTC units at Lake Howell and Oviedo High Schools and Auxiliary Unit 112 is very proud to support these fine cadets in their scouting activities. Today we begin our next 100 years of supporting the Boy Scouts of America.


We had an awesome February meeting. Special thanks to Jill Lux, 6th District President, for joining us. We completed the first reading on the proposed changes to our Constitution and By-Laws and set in motion the plans for our May Poppy drive as well as some additional fundraisers.


Our updated Constitution and By-Laws were officially adopted as of March 20th. We are truly a modern unit! As of now, our members can officially participate electronically by teleconference when they are not able to attend meetings in person.


What an awesome turn out for our Post's spring Giant Yard and Craft sale. 80% of our active membership supported the post by manning the post tables and providing cashiers for the breakfast served by the Post. Our bake sale items were again a big hit and everything sold out by the end of the day.

 

Our unit kicked off its first fundraiser for the year in March by announcing our first "bakeless" bake sale. Anyone wanting to contribute the cost of what they would have spent to make an item for a "real" bake sale can send their contributions to Unit 112 at PO Box 910, Goldenrod, FL 32733. Our goal is to raise enough money to fund our Reading Rockets program and to be able to make a contribution to the Girls State Transportation fund. Please contribute if you can. Thanks to 6th District President, Jill Lux, for this unique fundraising idea.

 

April is time for annual reports! This year, because we worked on many projects during the year but did not identify an official "chair" for any of the standard committees, our Secretary-Treasurer completed and submitted the annual reports for all of our committees.

 

Our April meeting kicked off the official use of electronic participation in our regular monthly meetings. Our approved Constitution and By-Laws and Standing Rules allow our members to now fully participate by phone or computer whenever they are not able to attend a meeting in person. We are the ONLY Auxiliary Unit in the Department of Florida that allows for electronic participation in our meetings!


We did it! We added another member after our April meeting so we are now at 107% of our membership goal. Our membership balloon is soaring above the clouds.

 

Unit 112 held elections for 2010-2011 at our May meeting. Congratulations to our new officers: Aunita Padgett, President; Liz Padgett, Vice-President; Nell Colbert, Secretary-Treasurer; Virginia Saunders, Chaplain and Johanna Langis, Sgt-at-Arms. Nell and Liz were also elected delegates to the 6th District Constitutional Conference with Aunita and Johanna elected to serve as alternates. Nell, Liz, Aunita and Johanna will also represent our unit as delegates and alternates to the Department of Florida annual convention in June. Our installation of officers is set for our July meeting and will be held in conjunction with the installation of the Post 112 officers.


What a beautiful Memorial Day celebration we had on May 30th! Post 112 planned an awesome community event that included the Sea Cadets serving as the color guard; an honor guard, complete with bugler and 21 gun salute and a beautiful poem saluting our Veterans read by Aunita Padgett. The service was followed by a great afternoon of food and fellowship at our Memorial Day Social.


Our unit was well represented at the June 2010 Department of Florida Convention at the Caribe Royale. Aunita and Nell were our delegates and participated in all four days of the convention. Liz and Johanna, our alternates, came down for the classes on Thursday. We are looking forward to kicking off a great 2010-2011 year with the Power of One where we will focus on how one person can make a difference in our world!

 

2008-2009


The Winter Park Memorial American Legion Auxiliary Unit 112 received its first charter many, many years ago but all of the early history of the unit was lost after the unit turned in its charter a number of years ago and the old historical documents were misplaced. After a lapse of several years, our unit was revitalized and applied to be rechartered in 2008. Our first elected officers were Martina Leonard, President; Nancy Travers, Vice President; Virginia Saunders, Secretary; Regina Travers, Treasurer and Aunita Padgett, Chaplain. We received our new charter for the 2007-2008 year at our official installation ceremony in October 2008 where 6th District President, Jill Lux, presented our charter and installed our officers. Unfortunately, Martina found it necessary to resign her position shortly after our election so Nancy Travers was installed as our President and the position of Vice President was left vacant.

 

Much of our first year was spent exclusively supporting the activities of Post 112 as we struggled to gain new members and learn about the Auxiliary in general. We helped with the Post's yard sales, monthly pancake breakfasts, Christmas in July and the Halloween party and we even held our first fundraiser, a bake sale, in conjunction with the 6th District picnic held in April 2009 at our post home. We also had members who attended the 6th District meetings throughout the year as well as the summer and fall 2008 conferences. Even though we got off to a pretty slow start, our unit accomplished quite a bit in its first year - we adopted a new Constitution and By-Laws, we were incorporated with the state, we established a YahooGroup that allows us to communicate effectively with each other, we held some moderately successful fundraisers and we established a Facebook group page. Our members are committed to achieving the goals of the American Legion Auxiliary as we develop our own programs to serve veterans, active duty military and our community. Since so much of our units very early history was lost years ago, it is hoped that this website page can be a chronological history of our new unit and that you not only enjoy reading about our exploits but that you might develop an interest in joining an American Legion Auxiliary unit near you.