Black History Month Presentation
Feb 10, 2023 12:00 PM
Racial Unity and Peacebuilding Committee
Black History Month Presentation

The Racial Unity and Peace-building Committee presents a special Black History Month Program under the national theme of “Black Resistance.” The program will consist of Art, Poetry and Reflections featuring Rotarians Glenn Towery and Dale Ricklefs.

New member Dale Ricklefs has a passion for understanding other cultures, and has taken steps to help to unite others, beginning with the formation of a Human Relations Club in high school, the purpose of which was to encourage the diverse Chicago high school students to understand each other's culture.  Over the past two and a half years, she has been in two anti-racism book study groups, one with women from her Oak Bluff Estates Subdivision and a second one with members from the Disciples of Christ Church, both in Round Rock. We are reading Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee at this time.

Dale Ricklefs, PhD, retired from Round Rock Public Library in 2010 after serving for 30 years as its library director. She was a member of the Round Rock Rotary Noon Rotary Club (1991-2007), serving as Club President, District Youth Exchange Chair and Asst. District Governor for PDG Rex Weaver. She currently volunteers as a consultant on the
Williamson County Institute for Excellence in Non Profits in the areas of government, the arts, and religion. She is the Chair of the Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of Round Rock.

Glenn Towery is a Rotarian, a 100% disabled Vietnam combat veteran of the United States Navy, and a native Texan. Glenn is also an award winning filmmaker, artist and writer of motion pictures, theater plays, poetry and children’s books. This year he and his wife Juanita Cole Towery have released three new illustrated children's books.

In 1997, Glenn graduated from Columbia College Hollywood, Magna Cum Laude as the first African American valedictorian in the more than 50-year history of the college, earning his Bachelor of Arts Degree majoring in Cinema and minoring in Broadcast Television Production. 

In 2022, Glenn Towery was awarded a “CONGRESSIONAL COMMENDATION” for the work that he has been doing with veterans and their family members after he founded the Veterans Suicide Prevention Channel on January 16, 2015 as an official nonprofit organization. He also founded the Austin Veterans Arts Festival, (AVAFEST), in 2018 as a way to provide opportunity and to encourage veterans to use “THE ARTS” as a non-pharmaceutical means for healing. Glenn is also responsible for creating the impetus to create the “RACE BASED TRAUMA PTSD Groups” that started at the Austin VA Medical Center under the supervision of Dr. Jordan Layne, which are now available at many VA facilities
throughout the nation.