The Austin Rotary Club spells student aid `D-i-c-t-i-on-a-r-y.` The service club is distributing 375 dictionaries to third graders in Austin Public Schools, plus Austin Area Catholic Schools and Holy Cross Lutheran School. The first-ever project of its kind for Austin Rotary Club got underway this week and should conclude before the end of September. Daniel M. Hems, treasurer, and Amy Baskin, club member, visited Banfield Elementary School Thursday in the latest distribution. `It`s our goal to give a dictionary to each and every third grader in Austin public or private schools,` Hems said. According to Hems, a Rotary Club member heard of the project in North Carolina and pitched the idea to the local organization, which has made supporting education a priority. In the past, the organization has made financial awards to local schools, but wanted to do something different and the dictionary project was it. Banfield`s principal Dale Erickson greeted Hems and Baskin Thursday morning and led them to third grade classrooms. There, Hems and Baskin told the students and their teachers about the Rotary Club and themselves.

Among the many community service projects of the organization is sponsorship of the annual Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) bike-a-thon each May. Baskin, executive director of the United Way of Mower County, Inc., told the students how United Way sponsors more than 20 local charities, including Boy, Cub and Girl Scouts of America organizations. The pair also told the students something about themselves. Hems is the U.S. Postmaster for Austin and Baskin is a former long-time Austin Board of Education member. They also told how Rotary`s 120 members participate in large and small ways to improve the quality of life in Austin and how the classroom represents people from different cultures and professions. Then, one by one the students` names were called and they stepped to the front of the classroom to accept a new dictionary from Hems and Baskin.

According to the Rotary Club duo, the dictionaries are targeted to children in second through eighth grades. They include both picture and word definitions. Each Banfield teacher told the Rotary Club members, the dictionaries would remain in the classrooms for two weeks, while the students are trained to use them. Later they will be sent home<