For the second year in a row, the lady who raised late-night television king David Letterman will attend the Kiwanis International Convention. Dorothy Mengering, known by many as "Dave's Mom," will be in Montreal for the 83rd Annual Kiwanis International Convention July 3-7. She will share her homespun wisdom at the convention's Open Luncheon.

Dave's Mom was featured in 1994 as Winter Olympics Games "correspondent" for the Late Show with David Letterman. Since then, she has published Home Cookin with Dave's Mom, a book that has pleased many stomachs and raised more than $100,000 for Kiwanis' Worldwide Service Project. (She has earmarked a portion of the book's proceeds for the virtual elimination of iodine deficiency disorders.)

In 1997, Dave's Mom roved the Nashville convention much the same way she did the 1994 Winter Olympics. With a cameraman at her side, she interviewed Kiwanians and other convention attendees, including celebrities such as Naomi Judd and Eunice Kennedy Shriver. At the convention's closing sessions, an edited video of the interviews left no question as to where Letterman got his wit and dry humor. The Nashville Arena was filled with laughter.

This year's Open Luncheon is slated for Sunday, July 5, in the Palais des Congres de Montreal's Panoramic Ballroom. According to David Rothman, lt. governor of the Long Island South Central Division of Kiwanis International (Kiwanis Clubs from Elmont to the Massapequas), more than 50 Kiwanians and their spouses will attend this year's mid-summer convention in Montreal.

Gun Control is Necessary

Marilyn Feldman, principal at the Nauset Middle School in Orleans, Mass/, at "waging peace."

A lower Cape Cod, Mass. Kiwanian, Marilyn made recent headlines when two eighth-graders had a gun in school. Though no malice was intended and no one was injured, the principal voiced an unequivocal stance: Bring a gun to school, and you're suspended for the school year. Her decision received community support.

"If any aspect of this incident can be gratifying, it is the response of the parents," stated a Cape Cod Times editorial. "They have the community's gratitude for putting the incident in perspective and responding without question to its seriousness.

"Principal Feldman deserves that gratitude too."

Kiwanis Keynotes is an exclusive monthly column in the Massapequan Observer.