Lafayette County Retired School Personnel (LCRSP) met on Thursday, April 9, 2026, at the FCS Financial Office in Higginsville, MO. A general meeting was held, followed by guest speaker Brigade Command Sergeant Major (Ret.), Don Kerrick Lilleman.

Several members had attended one or both of “The Missouri Legislature’s Desertion of Rural Public Schools” panel discussions at Santa Fe on March 24 and March 31.

Officers John Morgan, Carol Struchtemeyer, and Amy C. Thieman had presented MRTA information to the Lexington R-V faculty and support staff on April 7.

Information on the $500 Classroom grants and $500 Maggie Elder/Support Staff grants is now available. Applications are online only this year at mrta.org and are due June 30.

MRTA members are encouraged to re-sign up to receive Phone2Action text messages and respond immediately to them and MRTA email messages regarding bills in the Missouri Legislature. With the session ending on May 15, things could get really busy.

Treasurer and Community Impact Chair Gail Lilleman presented MRTA’s Community Service Hours report. Retired MO educators volunteered 935,866 hours (valued at $34.79) for a total value of $32,558,378.06. They donated $247,898 worth of food items and gave $597,150.20 towards hunger relief. Monetary donations to education totalled $52,080.00. Other monetary donations totalled $1,783,625.32. All of these money figures totalled $35,238,131.58!

Region 5 – which includes the counties of Carroll, Chariton, Cooper, Howard, Lafayette, Johnson, and Saline, plus Sedalia Community, and State Fair Community College – volunteered 28,103 hours valued at $977,703.37, donated $1719 worth of food items and gave $20,766.00 to hunger relief. They donated another $5,973.00 to public education, and gave $495,319.00 in other money donations for a total value of $1,101,480.37. These donations of time and money not only allow MRTA to keep its 501(c)(4) notfor- profit corporation status, but also should show the Missouri Legislature and the general public about the financial importance of Missouri’s retired educators. Retired educators continue to show up and make a difference!

Command Brigade Sergeant Major (Ret.) Kerrick Lilleman was the guest speaker. He gave a very interesting and moving talk on his 33 years in the U.S military. Lilleman is the son of Don and Gail Lilleman and is a graduate of C-1 High School. Inspired by his dad, Lilleman joined the National Guard at age 17 in his junior year of high school. Later, he went on to join the U.S. Army and served two tours of duty in Iraq doing the horrendously dangerous job of finding IEDs – the #1 killer in Iraq. He has never gotten over the loss of two of his men to these evil weapons – nor the five soldiers he lost to suicide once back home. Two years after Iraq, he was sent to Afghanistan as the commander of an Agricultural Development Team. Here he and his team tried to help Afghans learn to use more modern equipment and methods to help produce more food and improve their lives. In return, they also hoped to leverage information on the bad Afghans. Lilleman said he and his men did not engage much with the Iraqis, but in his interactions with Afghans he discovered that animals were treated better than women and children. Lilleman said his greatest joy – and what he misses most about life in the military – was the relationships he built through the teaching, coaching and development of soldiers under his command – very much like teachers and coaches do in their classrooms and arenas. We thank him for his years of dedicated service to our country.

The meeting concluded with some announcements: the Region 5 Annual Meeting will be held in Boonville on June 4. LCRSP may hold some public forums on issues and with candidates this summer and or fall. The next meeting of LCRSP will be Thursday, Sept. 10, place and time TBA. MRTA’s annual Meeting will be in St. Louis on Sept. 15-16.