Inducted January 2024 Nominated by Murray Pearson
David Blaker and Lenora Homulos have provided significant leadership and service to the Club over several years since joining the Huntley Curling Club in 1992. They each served several years on the Board of Directors, managed curling leagues as convenors, ran the HCC golf tournament for 12 years and freely contributed many hours of volunteer service.
Lenora served three years as Secretary. As well as those duties, she participated and assisted in many events and activities. Lenora was one of the organizers for four years of the Alzheimer’s Bonspiel in memory of Irene Hudson. Events such as this were a very important part of building member comradery and club spirit.
Dave served several years as a Board member including two years as vice-president. He began with the Social Director position, organizing in-house bonspiels and events. Among other achievements, he organized entertainment for the closing bonspiels and dinners. He then took on the role of Kitchen Director; responsibilities including maintenance and assisting with food requirements for several in-house activities. He organized the kitchen and the BBQ tent for the Carp Fair, obtaining and organizing volunteers, purchasing supplies, and interacting with the Health Inspector to bring about improvements needed to open the kitchen for the Fair. He teamed with Lenora, who helped in all these areas, especially by arranging and organizing volunteers, even though her time as a director had ended.
Following his service as Kitchen Director, Dave took over as Bar Director. At the time, the Bar was staffed by volunteers. He and Lenora posted a Bartender Volunteer sign-up sheet and spent many hours recruiting volunteers, reminding people of their upcoming bar shifts, and filling in as bartenders for people who cancelled or failed to attend. He was responsible for ordering and receiving supplies, managing money, banking, and renewal of the Club's liquor license. He spent Tuesday mornings from September through April at the Club managing beer and bar snacks deliveries. He helped promote and run Smart Serve courses needed to train volunteers. During his term the Board developed policies and procedures that ensured our volunteer bartenders followed specific closing times and serving procedures.
Following the passing of Mel Hicks, he and Lenora took over the management of the club's summer golf tournament. They managed sign-up sheets, organized teams, collected money, bought and assigned prizes, running it well on a break-even basis for twelve years.
Dave convened both the Tuesday Men's League and the Thursday open League. The latter was struggling to fill two draws, so Dave oversaw the shift to an Open league by encouraging mixed membership. Anyone who has convened a league knows how challenging it is to keep everyone satisfied. Dave managed it as equitably as possible, keeping it growing, also helping with cleaning and ice preparation.
Among the Board decisions Dave and Lenora encouraged and helped implement was the development of an advertising program to attract new members. The Board began an advertising program and held free Introduction to Curling days. The very first of those days attracted forty or so people to the Club and brought about several new registrations. This program and subsequent Open Houses were continued by the Club as effective ways to promote the club.
Another challenging issue facing the Board during Dave’s tenure involved equity concerns with membership fees. Single league players paid the same as those playing in multiple leagues, so fees were adjusted to better balance fees with usage; that’s reflected in the fee structure we have today. Any change, especially to fees, generates pushback, especially from those whose fees increase. Dave and other Board members had to defend and promote this new approach until it was widely accepted as a more equitable and reasonable fee structure.
