MATTOON — After a pause because of COVID, the Mattoon Rotary Club again will host a Rotary Youth Exchange student.
Due to the worldwide COVID pandemic, Rotary International halted its longtime youth exchange program in the summer of 2020. Rotary recently moved to allow clubs to resume hosting and sending high school students on a yearlong exchange.
The Mattoon club recently made a commitment to host a Rotary Youth Exchange student for the 2023-24 school year. The club also is encouraging Mattoon-area high school students to consider going on exchange during that same school year.
New Charleston Rotary Club officers begin terms
With the two-year layoff, the exchange program is restarting slowly. Just four of six Illinois districts chose to be involved this year. Rotary District 6490, which includes all of East-Central Illinois, is sending two area students on exchange this school year. One is a girl from Charleston going to France while the other is a boy from Tuscola, going to Brazil. In addition, Charleston, Marshall and Monticello are hosting students this school year.
The District 6490 Rotary Youth Exchange Committee has some new leadership with strong ties to the exchange program. One of the new RYE committee leaders is Kim Morrison of Mattoon. She has been involved in Rotary Youth Exchange in Mattoon and Arthur and is the parent of a student who spent a year on exchange. Morrison will serve as the district inbound coordinator, working with the foreign students who come to this area on exchange.
September and October are the months in which interested teens, ages 15-18, can apply to be Rotary Youth Exchange students. Rotary exchanges with about 40 countries. Students stay with two or three host families and must attend high school in the host country.
Bill Lair, a member of the district RYE committee, said the program is a cultural exchange.
“We’re not necessarily looking for straight-A students,” Lair said. Students must rank in the top half of their class.
“We’re looking for young people who will be ambassadors for their families, their community, our country and Rotary,” Lair added.
The program is for above-average students who are personable, smile and enjoy making new friends. Most students go on exchange either their junior year of high school or as a gap year between high school graduation and starting college.
The most recent Mattoon student to go on exchange was Sadie Armstrong, who went to Spain during the 2019-20 school year.
For more information on Rotary Youth Exchange, contact Kim Morrison at 217-621-7389 or Bill Lair at 217-218-2549. Information also is available at csrye.org.
My Town: Clint Walker’s memories of Coles County as pulled from the archives
Cosmic Blue Comics
From the Nov. 22, 1992, Journal Gazette, this photo of Cosmic Blue Comics in Mattoon; where I spent virtually every Saturday afternoon for about two years. That small back room you see just off to the right of the Coca-Cola sign was where they kept the many, and I mean many, long-boxes of back issues. I still own my bagged copy of “Tales of the Beanworld” issue No. 1 that I found back there. Sadly, this location is now just a “greenspace”.
Mattoon Arcade
Pictured, Shelbyville’s Bob Murray from the June 2, 1982, Journal Gazette, displaying his dominance over the TRON arcade game at the “Carousel Time” arcade at the Cross County Mall, later to be the Aladdin’s Castle, soon thereafter to be not a thing anymore. I spent just about every Saturday at that arcade, perhaps with that exact same haircut. No overalls, though. I was more of an “Ocean Pacific” kind of kid.
Icenogle’s
Pictured, from the Nov. 28, 1988, Journal Gazette, Icenogle’s grocery store. Being from Cooks Mills, we didn’t often shop at Icenogle’s…but when we did, even as a kid, I knew it was the way a grocery store is supposed to be in a perfect world, and that’s not just because they had wood floors, comic books on the magazine rack, or plenty, and I mean plenty, of trading cards in wax packs.
Cooks Mills
I had long since moved away from Cooks Mills by the time this Showcase item about Adam’s Groceries ran in the June 13, 1998, Journal Gazette, but there was a time when I very well could have been one of those kids in that photo; for if it was summer, and you had a bike, and you lived in Cooks Mills, that’s where you ended up. At last report, they still had Tab in the Pepsi-branded cooler in the back. I’m seriously considering asking my money guy if I could afford to reopen this place.
Mister Music
Pictured, from the July 16, 1987, Journal Gazette, this ad for Mister Music, formerly located in the Cross County Mall. I wasn’t buying records at that age, but I would eventually, and that’s where it all went down. If you don’t think it sounds “cool” to hang out at a record store with your buddies on a Friday night, a piping-hot driver’s license fresh in your wallet, you’d be right. But it’s the best a geek like me could do. Wherever you are today, owners of Mister Music, please know that a Minutemen album I found in your cheap bin changed my life.
Sound Source Guitar Throw
Portrait of the author as a young man, about to throw a guitar through a target at that year’s Sound Source Music Guitar Throwing Contest, from the April 18, 1994, Journal Gazette. Check out my grunge-era hoodie, and yes…look carefully, those are Air Jordans you see on my feet. Addendum: despite what the cutline says, I did not win a guitar.
Pictured, clipped from the online archives at JG-TC.com, a photo from the April 18, 1994, Journal Gazette of Sound Source Music Guitar Throwing Contest winner, and current JG-TC staff writer, Clint Walker.
Vette’s
Here today, gone tomorrow, Vette’s Teen Club, from the June 20, 1991, Journal Gazette. I wasn’t “cool” enough to hang out at Vette’s back in it’s “heyday,” and by “cool enough” I mean, “not proficient enough in parking lot fights.” If only I could get a crack at it now.
FutureGen
FutureGen: The end of the beginning, and eventually, the beginning of the end, from the Dec. 19, 2007, JG-TC. I wish I had been paying more attention at the time. I probably should have been reading the newspaper.
