T-burg Rotary Club delivers the goods

Last Tuesday, Dr. John Powell stepped up to a startline in the Trumansburg Shur-Save grocery store, armed with nothing but an empty cart and a familiarity of the aisles. A few minutes later, he was the proud owner of $284.54 worth of free groceries.

“This is the first thing I’ve won in the history of forever,” Powell said. “I remember thinking it was a prank call when Peggy called me, and then I remembered the fundraiser.”

Powell wasn’t stealing. He had bought a ticket for a chance to win the 8th Annual Trumansburg Rotary Club Supermarket Sweep, and his prize was the opportunity to run around the grocery store and grab as many free goods as possible within three minutes.

The event is modeled after a 1960s game show that has seen many revivals over the years. The show features a timed race through a supermarket where teams add items into shopping carts as fast as they can, with the goal of finishing with the haul of highest value.

Powell, a Trumansburg resident and frequent shopper at Shur-Save, had never seen one of the shows but was familiar with the concept.

“I can remember, as a kid, there were breakfast cereal companies where if you bought the cereal, you got to enter to win a sweepstakes to run around and fill a cart with toys or groceries,” Powell said. “I thought that would be the greatest thing ever, but my mom said, ‘That’s just to sell cereal. Nobody wins that.’ But I knew somebody had to win.”

Powell, a vegetarian, didn’t go for the usual high-ticket items such as steaks, but he did manage to grab his favorite olive oil and maple syrup. He said he didn’t plan out a special path or do much strategizing but stuck to his usual shopping route, just at a much faster pace.

The store closed down for the event, allowing just a few spectators to gather at the front doors to cheer Powell on. As he zoomed through the store, a countdown was announced through the loudspeaker.

Rotary President Peggy Haine called the event “the most fun three minutes you can possibly have in life.”

This year’s event raised about $2,000 for the Rotary Club — an event record. The money raised from this event will go toward causes that fall within certain criteria: promoting peace, fighting disease, providing clean water, supporting education, saving mothers and children, growing local economies and protecting the environment. Applications for community grants close May 31
this year.

Haine has been a Rotarian since 1989 when the organization first started allowing women to join. She joined the Ithaca Rotary Club while she was working at Cornell University and joined the T-burg chapter when she moved to town in 1993.

“I was invited to join after I had given a lecture [on the history of jazz] at the Ithaca Rotary and I thought that they were inviting me for comic relief,” Haine said. “When they were first required to admit women by the federal government, things were very tense and a lot of men quit. But I was happy to join because it was an excuse to get off the hill once a week to go downtown and meet interesting people.”

Haine has worked on many service projects over the last 32 years but said that her favorite of all time has to be the most recently completed. In April, the group successfully organized the re-treeing of a section of the fairgrounds along Route 96. The Department of Transportation had taken down older trees that were losing their limbs, but many in the community didn’t like how it looked afterward.

“It was really awful,” Haine said of the treeless area. “We got a bunch of people together and we raised money for trees, and we got really smart people who know their trees and know how to get people going. We did half of it, and then the town saw it and said they could find some money for it. That was really nice.”

The project culminated in a cleanup day and a planting day this past April, the latter boasting 40 volunteers.

Haine said that she has stayed with the organization for so long because her fellow members have always been smart, generous, hardworking and a lot of fun.

“We always welcome new members,” Haine said. “There’s always work to be done and fun to be had.”

The club has a new event coming up May 22, the First Annual Rubber Duck Race. The race will happen in Frontenac Creek beginning on Hector Street near the farmers market and finishing at the bridge on East Main Street near Gimme! Coffee. The owners of the ducks who pass the finish line first will win cash prizes. Tickets will be available at Shur-Save, and all proceeds will benefit the T-burg Food Pantry.

Learn more at tburgrotary.org.