Since 1945, the Shepherdstown Community Club — originally titled the Shepherdstown Men’s Club — has been an important and visible part of our community.

Now in these rapidly changing times, after much soul-searching, we are ready to take on additional, new projects and become even more relevant to the lives of all folks here in the Eastern Panhandle. After an objective look at current procedures and programs for managing the War Memorial Building and Morgan’s Grove Park, we are determined to engage a much larger cross section of the population, both young and old, and to focus more on the “community” in all aspects of our efforts. that is where you come in, where we desire your help. We want and need you as members and active participants to build upon our core group of dedicated active members who have sustained the club for years.

We are not just looking for manpower in our various undertakings. We want your ideas, critical feedback and projects that might have been out of our reach for various reasons. We want to instill an environment in which our members can have continuous brainstorming sessions, in which we learn from each event, each project and every program (either ours, or those that we host). Some of the challenges facing us, include building a new partnership with the business community, enhancing support for the very productive Shepherdstown Ministerial Association and other civic-minded organizations, improving interaction with Shepherd University and its students and, most importantly, re-examining how we maintain and operate Morgan’s Grove Park.

This is a serious effort. We have reduced family membership dues from $45 to $30, to $20 for individuals and $10 for students. Quite frankly, your engagement is more important than the money. Whatever fresh new ideas we get will be discussed at our annual general membership meeting on Nov. 14. Member or not, you are cordially invited to attend. We would like to see a lot of new faces in that meeting, people young and old sitting on the edges of their seats, with sleeves rolled up.

Prior to that, we invite you to get to know us by joining us in helping the Legendary Book Sale live up to its name. That annual event, actually part of our year-long outreach to the community, will be held in the War Memorial Building on Oct. 11-14.

For more information, contact me at 304-876-0598 or michael.austin@frontier.net, or contact any current SCC member.

Mike Austin, Acting President, Shepherdstown Community Club