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President’s Message As you are receiving and reading this newsletter we are still in the midst of the world-wide coronavirus pandemic. We are all dealing with the many unexpected changes on our daily lives and schedules caused by the virus outbreak. For TRTA this includes the cancellation of our 67th state convention and all District and local unit meetings through the end of April, and perhaps beyond that time.

At the District 4 level your elected officers and appointed committee chairs have been holding telephone and video conferences to make decisions on what must be cancelled and how to finish out the current year and move into the next year in a manner that will provide all that is necessary to our members. It is important to remember that the strength of our organization is not any meeting, any schedule, or what does or does not happen within a given timeline. The strength of our organization is its members, including YOU!

Therefore, I ask that you continue to monitor all recommendations at the local, state, and national level, and stay diligent with all precautions for as long as it takes. Stay home, wash your hands properly, practice social distancing, cover your face whenever you are out of your home, and keep your faith. Thank goodness we have phones, internet and video capabilities to stay in touch with family, friends, and neighbors. We can and we will get through this together. We are “Alone Together” and we are Strong!

Thank you for a great year!

Mary Widmier, President District 4 TRTA

T R T A Texas Retired Teachers Association The Voice for All Public Education Retirees

TRTA District 4: Brazoria, Fort Bend, Galveston and Harris Counties April 2020 Issue 6

Dates to Remember

TRTA 67th Annual State Convention

April 6-8, Corpus Christi Cancelled

Spring Leadership Development Conference

Tues. April 28, 2020 Cancelled

Fall Conference (next year) Tues. Sept. 29, 2020 9:30 a.m., Attendees: District 4 Officers, Committee Chairs, Local Unit Officers and Committee Chairs

DAY AT THE CAPITOL April 7, 2021

CELEBRATING WHERE WE ARE

“Every day may not be good… but there is something good in every day.”

Alice Morse Earle, American Historian

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THANK YOU for being counted as a member of TRTA!

TRTA is the only association where the education retiree

is the #1 priority. TRTA is over 98,000 members strong

Time to Celebrate Some of Our Accomplishments!.

• Scholarships: In 2019, TRTA local units gave out 318 scholarships and/or grants for a total monetary value of $254,964. Of this number District 4 local units awarded 76 scholarships worth $53,750.

• Books: In 2019, 167,868 books were distributed as part of the Children’s Book Project and the Student to Student Book Program. Of this number District 4 local units distributed 18,902 books.

• Volunteer Hours: In 2019, TRTA members contributed 6,140,140 hours of community service, valued at $156,143,760. The District 4 portion of this total number was 555,613 volunteer hours, valued at $140,184.

Way to go, everyone! District 4 continues to shine!

Membership Honors TRTA reached its highest membership ever in 2019, reaching 98,111 members. In the Inside Line issued on April 6, TRTA announced its 2019-2020 district and local unit membership awards. We are excited to see that District 4 received 3 out of the 4 TRTA state awards:

o Local Unit with the Highest Growth by Number: Cypress-Fairbanks ARE o District with the Highest Growth by Percentage across the state: District 4 o District with the Highest Growth by Number across the state: District 4

This was awesome! Therefore, we need to recognize CyFARE President, Sheila Wolf, and Membership Chair, Becky Riley for their hard work. We also thank all local units in our district for their work in maintaining and seeking out new members and our thanks to our district level 1st Vice-President, Charmaine Hines, for her leadership and encouragement throughout the year!

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SPRING PLANNING MEETING February 18, 2020Little did we know of the changes due to Covid-19

Dr. Mary Widmier, D4 President

Rosalind Haynes, 2nd VP

Pearlie Cooper, Retirement Ed

Karen Thorton, Historian

Carla Meuth, Foundation

Glen Peterson, Treasurer

Denise Pineault, Member Benefits

Dorsey Reese, Legislative

May Ann Dolezal,

Secretary - President

Elect Charmaine Hines, 1st

Helena Pierson,

Informative & Protective

Services

Patti Faulkner, Healthy Living

Brenda Murdock and her daughter Lisa Ramke, presentation, Using Gmail and MailChimp for TRTA Communications, was very informative.

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Patti Faulkner led us in an exercise activity

Stay’cation Texas TreasuresKitchen Collection

Wine ’n Dine

Our Basket Raffle project began at our Feb. meeting and we already have $495.  Ticket sales

will continue through all Fall 2020 meetings with drawings for the winners at our Fall Conference on Sept. 29, 2020. All proceeds will be donated to

the Texas Retired Teachers Foundation. 

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THANKING OUR LEGISLATURES

Rep. Dan Huberty State Award Rep. Gene Wu State Award pictured with Mary and John Widmier

Sen. Brandon Creighton presentation pictured with Carolyn Monroe and Pat Kahak at a HARTA meeting

Rep. Alma Allen State Award pictured with Mary Widmier

Legislative Super Stars Although all our District 4 Legislative Chairs have done great work this year, we have some Super Stars who I would like to give some special public recognition. They are: Eleanor Blain, Fort Bend Harris Retired

Educators; Bonnie Moore, Spring Branch Area Retired Educators; Jane Frantz, Northeast Harris County Retired Educators Association; Joy Steinbach, Mainland Retired Teachers Association; Carolyn Monroe, Humble Area Retired Teachers Association; Peggie Cain, North Harris County Association of Retired School Personnel; Jenice Coffey, Baytown Area Retired School Employees Association; Judy Vernon, Fort Bend County Retired Educators; James Bailey, Clear Creek ART, and Dorsey Reese, Katy Area Retired Educators.

These local unit Legislative Chairs have been building relationships with their local legislators and having them attend local unit meetings, visiting and writing them, registering voters, working the polls, writing articles, sponsoring candidate forums, and providing unit members with informative voting information and guidance. This is outstanding work! Although I want to thank all the chairs, these chairs deserve special recognition. I will be recognizing each chair with a certificate, but these Super Stars can expect a little something extra in addition. Thanks to all of you for every bit of work that you do and thank you for allowing me to serve as your District 4 Legislative Chair.

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COMMITTEE NEWS

Children’s Book Project “The more that you read, the more things you will know.

The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”  Dr. Seuess Children’s Book Project for 2019: A GOLD STAR to ALL LOCAL UNITS for providing knowledge and adventure to children through the contribution of 18,902 books.

WAY TO GO, DISTRICT 4!!!

Greetings to our new Historians  Every year the TRTA State Historian creates a slideshow presentation to share at the annual TRTA convention. District Presidents and District Historians will work with a State Historian to ensure that local unit’s pictures will be included in this memory book slideshow. The slides that will be submitted from each local unit are set up in a two-year biennium. Usually the first year of your local unit slide presentations will picture the local officers and committee members.  The second year of the biennium the two slides of your local will show unit activities. Everyone enjoys seeing the slideshow on the big screen at convention and on the TV screen at the Historian display. Blessings,  Karen Thornton, District 4 Historian

Informative and Protective Services Alert: Cybercriminals are using concerns about the coronavirus to launch phishing attacks -

Learn to identify and protect yourself against such attacks

What is happening? While COVID-19, or the novel coronavirus, is capturing attention around the world, cybercriminals are capitalizing on the public’s desire to learn more about the outbreak. There are reports of phishing scams that attempt to steal personal information or to infect your devices with malware, and ads that peddle false information or scam products. In one example, a phishing email that used the logo of the CDC Health Alert Network claimed to provide a list of local active infections. Recipients were instructed to click on a link in the email to access the list. Next, recipients were asked to enter their email login credentials, which were then stolen.

What Should You Do? 1. If you are looking for information on the coronavirus, visit known reputable websites like the Center for

Disease Control or the World Health Organization. 2. Be on the lookout for phishing emails, which may appear to come from a trusted source. Remember, you

can look at the sender’s details – specifically the part of the email address after the ‘@’ symbol – in the “From” line to see if it looks legitimate.

3. Be wary of emails or phone calls offering unexpected or unprompted information. Also be aware of emails from unfamiliar sources that contain links or attachments. Do not click on these links, as they could be embedded with malware.

4. Although social media companies like Facebook are cracking down on ads spreading coronavirus conspiracies and fake cures, some ads may make it past their review process. Remember, it’s best to seek information on the disease from official sources like those mentioned above.

5. If you’re interested read upon spotted and protecting yourself against attacks. 6. Finally, to protect your devices again malware like the types that can come from a phishing attack,

ensure that security protection is installed on all devices. Helena Pierson – Informative and Protective Services Chair

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Healthy Living Committee As Healthy Living Committee Chairperson, I have been so fortunate to have excellent chairpersons throughout our 22 units. So many of them have offered good ideas for me to share with all our members, and I am most appreciative of that. I received all their final reports for the year, and out of 22, only three did not fulfill all of the six requirements that are necessary for exemplary certificates. All nineteen that fulfilled the six steps deserve special recognition, and out of those, two

were especially outstanding. Those two are Nancy Monroe with Northeast Harris County Retired Educators and Linda Rhodes with Humble Area Retired Teachers.

The Northeast HCREA group had a CVS pharmacist present a program on shots for seniors as well as different medications that are helpful to the elderly. At the same time, they gave flu shots to those who needed them. In addition, Nancy provided pictures of exercises performed at their meetings, the flu shots being administered, and a fun field trip for social interaction.

Linda Rhodes with HARTA had a personal trainer/dietician discuss “The Mind Diet” with her group, and she had someone from Walgreens administer shots to their members, spouses, and friends, with 51 participants receiving them. Additionally, they had a twelve week program of Texercise classes for 30 minutes each that was open to HARTA members, friends, and church members (they used a church for Texercise). Furthermore, HARTA also offered one or two exercises at each monthly meeting, and they provided pictures of all of these various activities.

I am proud of not only those two groups, but of all of this year's chairmen and what they have accomplished, and I hope that we will have even more groups receiving outstanding recognition next year. I think we will!

Report from Patti Faulkner – District 4 Healthy Living Chair

Technology The role of the Technology Contact is to update both the TRTA webpage as well as update the Facebook page. The biggest change this year has been a change in the way to manage the webpage. Most units changed from using the Mura platform to using the TRTA technology staff to update your page. There are challenges, as anytime there is change, there is a learning curve. Facebook: district iv trta, and web: https://trta.org/districts-and-local-units/. A quarterly newsletter was added as part of the duties and has been fun and rewarding.

Mary Lou Purello, Technology Contact

Parliamentarian Tips The main purpose of the parliamentarian is to help the president run a smooth meeting. To do this, the parliamentarian and the president should be familiar with local, district, and state by-laws as well as Robert’s Rules of Order. Depending on how your local by-laws are written, the Parliamentarian may also be in charge of rewriting the by-laws should the state or district by-laws change, or your local unit decides on a change. If your rewrite includes only changes to be compliant with the state or district, you can make the changes and simply announce to the membership that you have done so. If however, you make other changes, you must follow your current by-laws and use whatever procedure is outlined for approval of the new version. Diana Apsey, Parliamentarian

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Community Volunteer Services

“There is Value in Volunteering!”

All twenty-two local units of TRTA District 4 showed they believe this motto of our State Community Volunteer Services Committee. All twenty-two local units submitted numbers

of volunteer hours donated to Texas during 2019, submitting a total of 555,613 volunteer hours. The State of Texas values these hours at $140,184.16. Congratulations! In District 4, ten local units increased their numbers of reported volunteer hours in 2019, as compared to 2018 numbers. Congratulations!

As District 4 CVS Chair, I thank all TRTA District 4 members who showed they believed this motto by helping schools, hospitals, churches, their communities, neighbors, friends, and family. I thank each local unit chair who reported numbers and sent photos of volunteer activities to post on TRTA State Community Volunteer Services Committee’s Facebook page. Keep volunteering!

Nancy Heard - District 4 CVS Chair

Legislative News

As these are unprecedented times that we are all enduring through the coronavirus pandemic, I hope that everyone is safe and practicing safe distancing, washing your hands, covering your face, taking care of yourself and your loved ones, and adhering to all guidelines and recommendations presented to us by our leaders and health care professionals.

During Primary Elections earlier this year, candidates were chosen who will run in the General Election that is scheduled for November 3, 2020. Some contests resulted in a Runoff Election that was scheduled for May 29, 2020, but that runoff date has been postponed to July 14, 2020. Many municipalities have postponed elections that were scheduled for May 2nd to November 3, 2020.

According to the Texas Secretary of State, remaining Election Dates currently are as follows:

Realizing that the status of all of this is uncertain at the present – and even the November 3rd Election itself – I am simply asking District 4 Legislative Chairs to continue doing what you’re doing to the extent that you can. As Stay at Home – Work Safe directives, Shelter in Place directives, safe distancing demands, and other restrictions are preventing us from physically carrying out many of our routines, continue to keep in touch with your legislators via social media, e-mail, snail mail, and telephone. All these still work. Continue to thank them for work they may be doing on your behalf in response to the virus and continue to urge your unit members to do the same. Although legislators are busy, they will notice this.

Thank you for being a member of TRTA and an active member of District 4 and thank you for allowing me to serve as your District Legislative Chair

Dorsey Reese, Legislative Committee Chair

Saturday, May 2, 2020 Uniform Election Date (Limited)

Tuesday, July 14, 2020 Primary Runoff Election

Tuesday, November 3, 2020 Uniform Election Date

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What We Can Learn from the Easter Bunny

Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.

An Easter bonnet can cover the wildest hare.

Everyone needs a friend who is all ears.

All work and no play can make you a basket case.

Everyone is entitled to a bad hare day.

Some body parts should be floppy.

On April 7 we ZOOMED! Thanks to AMBA, Jon Green who helped facilitate the TRTA District 4 Board meeting. At one point there were 22 on line having our first face to face in a long time. Big thank you to President Mary who worked so hard arranging this meeting.

ZOOM