Rotary club spreads holiday joy

This past month, members of the Cloquet Rotary Club were busy working together to make the holidays brighter for families in Carlton County. The non-profit group started the holiday season by offering Pet Photos with Santa during the Home for the Holidays weekend.

Money raised from Pet Photos with Santa was added to the Project Elf Fund, a Rotary project to help local families struggling during the holidays. School counselors in Carlton County nominate families in need. The Cloquet Rotary Club adopts selected families for the season to "bless them with a need, a want, and a wish."

This year, four families were nominated. Club members didn't have the heart to say no to any of the nominations and made generous personal donations to the fund so that all these families could be blessed. The Rotary Club elves came together and shopped for presents for every member of the families. The presents were wrapped and delivered in time for Christmas.

The Cloquet Rotary Club is a local chapter of the Rotary International Organization. Members of the local chapter come from various businesses and professions in Carlton County. High School juniors and seniors are also selected to be junior Rotarians and club members for the school year. Together, they work on various service projects in the community and worldwide.

Rotary members could also be seen at SuperOne ringing the Salvation Army Bell, a long-standing club tradition. The Cloquet Rotary Club also took on a new project this year by volunteering to run the cookie house at Bentleyville the Saturday before Christmas. This was mainly a Junior Rotarian project with a few adult Rotarians to supervise on a very busy day.

At its peak, the Cloquet Rotary Club had over 50 members. Numbers decreased during COVID and, more recently, because of busy work schedules. The club is smaller but still positively impacts the communities in Carlton County in many ways. If you are interested in learning more about the club or becoming a member, you can visit their website at CloquetRotary.org

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Behind the Scenes at Bentleyville

Column by Jennifer Shepherd / For the Pine Knot News

I have visited Bentleyville every year since it moved to Bayfront in Duluth. It is one of my favorite activities during the holiday season. This year, I saw Bentleyville from a new perspective inside the cookie house.

I am a member of the Cloquet Rotary Club, and I work closely with our junior Rotarians, high school students who have joined the club for a year. Bentleyville sounded like a fun activity and a way to serve the community. I picked Saturday, Dec. 21, the start of Christmas break, so that it wouldn't conflict with school activities.

But when I signed up, I didn't realize that the Saturday before Christmas was Bentleyville's busiest night of the season. We arrived at 4:15 p.m., 45 minutes before the park opened. After a quick orientation, we were instructed to have all 12 vats of hot chocolate ready and 20 boxes of cookies opened and prepared to serve. They warned us that we would be making hot chocolate all night. We didn't believe them – could we really go through that much hot chocolate and twenty large boxes of cookies?

The Cookie House is just before the big tree and the path around the park. As we waited for the park to open, we watched the mascots arrive and greet each other. We laughed as the Grinch danced with Rudolph. Frosty and Dasher gave each other high fives. The security guards taste tested our hot chocolate to warm up before the crowds came. At 4:59 p.m. we joined the countdown – five, four, three, two, one – The switch was flipped and Bentleyville instantly transformed into a magical twinkle-light wonderland.

Almost instantly, lines formed outside the Cookie House. Everyone wanted some hot chocolate and cookies as they walked along the lighted path. Within 15 minutes, our hot chocolate containers had been replaced and refilled. The cookie boxes were dwindling quickly, and we opened more.

The Junior Rotarians stood behind the open window, greeting everyone with a Merry Christmas and asking how many cups of cocoa and cookies their group needed. Most were families of 3-5 people, but some groups were as large as 20. The lines were long, but everyone was patient. They were all in a happy and festive mood.

Christmas music played throughout the park and inside the cookie house. The giant tree's lights danced to the music. At one point in the evening, a wedding occurred inside the tree.

What surprised me the most wasn't the sheer number of people or that everyone was so pleasant and patient. It was the variety of people and where they came from. I thought Bentleyville was a Minnesota activity, primarily people from the area and maybe a few sports teams from the twin cities here for tournaments. But we met people from all over the world – from England, India, Japan, and Africa. They all came out on a cold night to enjoy the lights.

So many people asked us how much they could pay for the cookies and cocoa. They often looked shocked and disbelieving when we told them there was no charge. We wished them a Merry Christmas and told them to continue down the lighted path to find Santa, marshmallows, popcorn, and all the other treats Bentleyville offers.

The Junior Rotarians stayed busy inside the Cookie House as the night continued. They switched jobs halfway through. They made one vat after another of hot chocolate all night long. At the end of the night, the wall of shelves that housed cookies and hot chocolate was almost empty. We must have served thousands of cookies and cups of cocoa. Before we could wonder where the cookies would come from tomorrow, a group of volunteers pulled up with a trailer full of more cookies and hot chocolate mix. Within minutes, the shelves were full again.

At 10 p.m., we cleaned and watched out the Cookie House windows as the lights of Bentleyville turned off again. We all cheered on a job well done, leaving Bentleyville tired but full of joy and Christmas spirit.

Walking back to my car, I was stopped by some of the Bentleyville employees who had given us our orientation. They confessed they were a little nervous that it was a bunch of high school kids running the cookie house on such a busy night. But they sang the kids' praises and told me they were one of the best groups in the cookie house this season. They appreciated all our hard work and how we stayed focused and cleaned up our mess. I told them how much fun we had and that we would be back next year.

Bentleyville truly is a magical place. Whether you visit or work behind the scenes, you will leave Bentleyville full of Christmas spirit and childlike joy. When you visit next year, make sure to thank the volunteers. Spreading all that cheer is a lot of hard work.