Our thanks and appreciation go to board member Marge Holmes, who again organized this annual event in which the Board of Directors of CKRE traditionally honors our great volunteers for their tremendous loyalty and dedication.

Last year over 80 volunteers gave an amazing total of 7,858 hours. Our volunteers are undoubtedly the backbone of CKRE. Without them there would be no broadcast. And there are many in the community who agree with us.

The Wal-Mart Company thinks our volunteers do such a marvelous job that they full sponsored our 13th Volunteer Appreciation Dinner, and the Lexington Herald-Leader again provided us with the facilities in which to hold our dinner.

Our appreciation and thanks goes to the Wal-Mart Company for their support and generosity, to the Lexington Herald-Leader, and also to all those businesses and organizations who helped us out with gift certificates and door prizes.

These included Max & Erma's, TGI Friday, Rafferty's, Joseph-Beth, and Kroger. Also Great Harvest Bread Company, Alltel, Habitat for Humanity, Red Mile, Blood Horse, Central KY Blood Center, Central Baptist Hospital, and Steve Medley.

Thank you everyone - and especially thank you to our volunteers - you helped make a good thing even better.

Margaret Chase
Executive Director

In Tom's place, the Board of Directors is pleased to announce Margaret Chase, Executive Director of CKRE, has been appointed Chairwoman of the Board. Margaret has been with CKRE for several years and is looking forward to the many opportunities and challenges that face our organization in the coming year.

In mid-January Vanessa Oliver joined the staff of CKRE as Office Supervisor. Vanessa is already familiar with CKRE, having been a volunteer since January of last year. She will be helping us with daily operations at the studio, and we are glad to have her on the team.

In other news we thank outgoing board members Maggie Johnson, Jeff Franklin and Herb Pettersen for their dedicated efforts, and we welcome Martha Goss and Jo Staggs-Neel. We look forward to their input into CKRE.

In the mornings we broadcast all our local and regional publications, and we always begin with the live reading of the Lexington Herald-Leader at 8am Monday through Saturday (9am on Sundays).

In the afternoons, with repeats throughout the night, we broadcast the reading of national publications, from a satellite feed from the "InTouch" Network in New York.

CKRE reads the obituaries for Lexington and Kentucky at 9am every day (10am Sundays). We read only the place, name, and age of the deceased - but if any listener wants full details they may call us at CKRE at 859-257-2702 and we will read you the entire obituary over the telephone.

Our staff consists of Margaret Chase, (volunteer) Executive Director; Joyce McGuire, (volunteer) Office Manager; and Vanessa Oliver, our new Office Supervisor. On weekends, volunteers Tom Dixon and Al Crabb manage Saturdays and Sundays respectively.

If you have any questions, or problems with your radio, please call us at Central Kentucky Radio Eye. Our office hours are Monday to Friday 8am to 1pm (Saturday and Sunday 9am to noon). The number to call is 859-257-2702Z.

And now, welcome the following new listeners to CKRE:

Audrey was born in New York State, but had lived in Kentucky since 1957. Her family moved here when IBM opened their plant. During her career she was a secretary and also a librarian at Transylvania University. She had a degree in Commerce from UK and a master's in Library Science also from UK. Audrey was a member of Mensa, and she also had been a volunteer at Central Kentucky Computer Society.

Audrey particularly enjoyed traveling. She had a great collection of post cards, and at one time belonged to the Lexington Travel Club. Among other interests and hobbies Audrey played bridge. She also enjoyed reading - and it showed in her excellent reading skills at CKRE.

Audrey was an extremely reliable volunteer, and she is greatly missed by her friends and fellow readers at CKRE.

What friends in the community may not know is that it costs $110 plus delivery charges to purchase each radio. Added to that, we have processing and distribution costs.

CKRE has reached a point where we are almost out of radios. The ones we have left are many years old, and in spite of our volunteer radio repairman, John Mau, who can almost work miracles, the quality of sound and reception is poor.

Last year we had over 100 new listeners - and now we need to purchase new radios. If anyone would like to send a donation specifically marked for the purchase of radios, we would be very grateful. CKRE is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Donations are tax-exempt, and you would be making a diference to the everyday life of someone visually or physically handicapped.

The address to send a donation is CKRE, University Box 1030, Lexington, Kentucky 40506.

Thank you - CKRE

Meanwhile, we draw listeners' attention to the following notes:

The Health Corner: Every weekday, Monday through Friday at 10 am, CKRE broadcasts the Health Corner. This 30-minute locally produced program consists of material taken from a variety of sources including health and wellness periodicals, government health and safety information, magazines and newspapers, medical pamphlets, and several reliable websites.

CKRE thanks the following publishers who recently donated new or renewed gift subscriptions for the benefit of CKRE listeners:

CKRE appreciates the opportunity to broadcasting the reading of these excellent health publications on CKRE radio.

In further information, we ask listeners to note that there is a new format to our Health Corner on Wednesdays and Fridays:

AARP News Wednesdays at 10am is now AARP news, in which you can hear senior-related health information, and much more, from the latest AARP publications. These include the AARP Bulletin and the AARP Magazine, which was formerly called AARP Modern Maturity.

Women's Health Fridays at 10am is Women's Health, in which we concentrate on women's health and wellness issues. We will also be offering some human-interest stories, but again the emphasis will now be on women's health.

These changes to our Health Corner are in response to many requests from male and female listeners. We hope the new format will be helpful, especially to those listeners who have expressed their interest in the Health Corner.

Regional Papers: For the benefit of new listeners we wish to explain that we broadcast news from a different regional paper every weekday at 10:30am.

CKRE appreciates and thanks all these regional publishers for their generosity in donating their newspapers (Frankfort paper - part donated) and we welcome and thank the Woodford Sun Publishers, who recently joined our Regional Paper line-up.

The Kentucky Series: Another locally produced program is our Kentucky Series, and this goes out every weekday at 12 noon. For those listeners interested in Kentucky and the surrounding area, we broadcast readings from many local and regional magazines. We are pleased to say the following publishers have recently donated new subscriptions to CKRE:

CKRE appreciates and thanks all these publishers for helping us to broadcast the printed word to our listeners.

Also for your information, coming soon listeners will be able to hear two books in our Kentucky Series.

The first is a special CKRE presentation in honor of the bicentennial anniversary of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The book of the same name, written by Eleanor J. Hall, will be broadcast in seven episodes in the Spring; and we plan to introduce it with short biographies on each of the young men who took part in this famous trek into the American frontier. We will conclude the presentation of "The Lewis and Clark Expedition" with articles and information on the various bicentennial celebrations taking place. The exact date of the broadcast will be announced later.

By special request we will broadcast the book "A Diet Pill, A Pretty Rock and A Live Snake for the Teacher" by the late well-known educator Helen M. Reid. We plan to broadcast this short but charming book in four parts the week after this newsletter goes out in the mail. So be sure to listen for that - weekdays at noon - in our Kentucky Series.

And this completes our CKRE Program Notes. If listeners have any questions or comments about our programming, please call us at 859-257-2702. Or you can also e-mail us at CKREweb@lsv.uky.edu. And as always, we will be delighted to hear from you.

Judy Engelberg - We are glad to say Judy has recovered following several weeks out due to eye surgery. She's now back in her regular spot, and listeners can once again hear her reading the Louisville Courier-Journal on Mondays at 11am. Welcome back Judy.

Libby King - We are very pleased to tell listeners that we have a new volunteer. Libby joined CKRE in January. She will be operating the soundboard on Saturday mornings, coordinating our live 2-hour broadcast of the Lexington Herald-Leader from 8am to 10am on CKRE Radio and on Lexington Insight Cable TV - Library Channel 20.

And our thanks and appreciation goes to Sarah Herbener and to Kim Harmon. These two volunteer readers have recently retired from CKRE. Sarah had been with us since October 2001 and she read the Louisville Courier-Journal on Thursdays. Kim read with the Lexington Herald-Leader team on Sundays, and she had been with CKRE for almost a year. These great readers were a tremendous asset to our service, and we miss them both - and we wish them good luck in their new endeavors.