Two Elks 6 Members Receive Special Citations
Jul 01, 2024 01:55PM ● By Noreen Stevenson
Elks 6’s Exalted Ruler Sue Hill, left, presents three first-place Special Citations that Barbara Cherry and Stephen Clazie earned in the California-Hawaii Elks Public Relations contest. Together they swept the first-place awards in all three categories of Division III competition. That is very rarely accomplished. Barbara took first place in CHEA’s Lodge Website. She was the webmaster for the GreenHaven Pocket Farmers Market. Clazie’s Special Citations were for best Community Service & Image Brochure about the GreenHaven Pocket Farmers Market, and a Special First Place Citation for Best Event Brochure; “Elks 6 Remembers Veterans.” Photo by Nicole Holton Alvarado
SACRAMENTO, CA (MPG) - Elks 6 presented three first-place California-Hawaii Elks Association (CHEA) Special Citation awards to two of its members at a recent Lodge meeting.
CHEA held its annual contest for three public relations events. Sacramento Elks took first place for Division III Lodges in all three events. After the Elks 6’s presentation, Elks 6 Grand Lodge Special Representative Robert Brotherton said, “It was an outstanding accomplishment for Elks 6 because this rarely happens where one Lodge takes first place in all three events.”
Elks 6 Exalted Ruler Sue Hill presented two CHEA Special Citations to Past Exalted Ruler (PER) Stephen B. Clazie at a recent Lodge meeting. The first one was for the best Community Service & Image Brochure.
This brochure contained copies of nine issues of the Pocket News with stories and photos about the GreenHaven Pocket Farmers Market (GHP) by Clazie that were published this year. They ranged from “Dinger Gets a Country Style Breakdancing Lesson” to “Eight-Month-Old Wins Halloween Costume Contest.”
The brochure also included four copies of the Elks 6’s Weekly Blast emailed to all Elks 6 members with an update of events. There were also four copies of stories on the Lodge’s website. Each one of the stories in the Blast and on the website told of an event at the market.
The Sacramento City Unified School District approved two emails to be disseminated to approximately a thousand contacts at Didion K-8 School. Those two emails were part of the brochure. The first email started with Clazie writing “ONCE UPON A TIME . . .” and telling how the Sacramento River Cats mascot was coming to GHP.
The second email was about the market’s Halloween contest for children in a veggie or fruit-inspired costume. It had a photo of the market's manager, Vic Cima, in a veggie costume.
During the Lodge presentation, Clazie said how he was a journalism major in college, and finally in retirement he had the pleasure of writing whatever he wanted to say. He thanked Vic Cima for giving him that opportunity to have fun.
He told how he would have an idea at about 2 or 3 in the morning for a good story about the market. He would phone Vic or send him an email in the middle of the night. Clazie even learned how to send text messages rather than calling.
Barbara Cherry was also recognized at the Lodge meeting for taking first place in CHEA’s Lodge Website. Cherry has been Elks 6’s Lodge webmaster since 2007.
She was also the webmaster for the GreenHaven Pocket Farmers Market and was a very valuable asset to Cima in managing the first two years of operation. The website featured over 30 individual vendors, which were updated with weekly specials. Customers could browse the website in search of items, taking the customer to every vendor that had their item.
The GHPfarmersmarket.com website is registered for Google Analytics.
When a person enters key search words from a web browser, such as: GHP, Farmers, Market, etc., Elks 6’s GHP website comes right up. Barbara added additional meta tags to the search engine, which brought search results directly to the GHP market website.
Vic Cima retired because of health reasons, but Cherry has continued as the webmaster, accountant, and bookkeeper this year under Nicole Holton Alvarado. Cherry continues to keep the vendor link up-to-date on a weekly basis and continues to post information about GHP’s upcoming market “guest appearances.”
After ER Hill presented Cherry with her Special Citation, PER Clazie told the members present, “This is a very special presentation this evening. It is extremely rare that one Lodge takes first place in all three events of CHEA’s public relations contest. This is something that only the most distinguished, impressive, and outstanding Lodges like Santa Maria Elks Lodge #1538 accomplish.”
Clazie noted Barbara Cherry has been a wonderful asset to Elks 6 for a number of years, and added he wanted to make one more comment before Barbara Cherry got to say it.
He said, “As a journalism student my future wife, who was an English major, proofread my stories. Over 60 years later she is still proofreading them today.”
Cherry added that she worked with Joan Clazie at an officers’ retreat at Bruce Synhorst’s Lake Tahoe cabin on Elks 6’s first website over 17 years ago. She concluded, “I brought the technical skills, and Joan did all of the writing.”
ER Hill also presented Steve Clazie a second Special First Place Citation for Best Event Brochure. Elks 6 submitted Clazie’s story, “Elks 6 Remembers Veterans,” which was published on the front page of the November 24 issue of both Pocket News and Land Park News. The story was also published in the December issue of Sacramento Elks Lodge 6. One of the photographs from that story was published in the winter edition of The California-Hawaii Elk.
Linda Pohl is a longtime member of Elks 6, and she is a sales executive with Messenger Publishing Group. She has been a major supporter of the Lodge, and a valuable asset in getting publicity for the Lodge in both Pocket News and Land Park News. Ms. Pohl was in attendance for the special presentation, and Elks 6’s ER Sue Hill asked her if she wanted to say anything.
Her only response was, “Steve Clazie is a beautiful writer!”
