By JENNA RHUDE
Moapa Valley Progress
For members of the Moapa Valley Rotary Club, the July 4th holiday starts early in the morning. At 4 AM the Rotarians gather behind the Fine Arts Bldg at to begin cooking for the community. This year the group flipped around 2,000 pancakes, cooked up 700 sausage patties and many pounds of eggs. It costs around $1200 to provide this to the community.
The Rotary club paid for breakfast. Anderson Dairy donated all the milk and Overton McDonald’s helped out with the ice.
The motto for the Rotary club is “service above self.” When asked how the Rotary gets money to fund this event, the answer was that the majority comes from Rotary booths run during the Clark County Fair.
Each Rotarian was busy with a task from mixing up eggs to serving up the meal for the long line of people. Scott Adams and Terry Burkland spent most of their time belly-up to a huge griddle flipping pancakes.
“The hotter the grill gets, the shorter I get,” joked Rotarian Scott Adams as he reached over the griddle with spatula in hand. “By the end we only get 3 rows (of pancakes), not 4 on the grill.”
The local Rotary chapter has around 15 members who, along with family and friends show up to serve the community breakfast.
“We are a non-profit, international service organization,” explained the local Rotary President Dana Utgard. “Our club focuses mostly on community service. We are made up of businesses and people who want to give back to our community.”
The breakfast also provided a wonderful place for youth to learn about those who have served and fallen protecting our freedom. During the meal several young children walked up to veterans in uniform and shook their hands, thanking them for their service.