FAIRCLOTH OF EXCELSIOR CLUB EYES PROGRESS

Kelly Faircloth knows what it's like to be one of the guys.

Faircloth, president of the Excelsior Optimist Club of Cape Girardeau, leads an all-female club in a traditionally male-dominated domain.

Faircloth has been a board member or executive of the Excelsior group since it was chartered three years ago. She said she looks forward to continuing work on club projects.

"I'll be glad to support and help expand programs we've initiated in the past," she said. "As past president, I'll have a lot more time to work with the projects."

Activities of the Excelsior club have not always seen smooth sailing. Faircloth wistfully recalled the club's first chicken and dumpling fund-raiser dinner.

"We rented the Arena Building for the day of the dinner," she said, "but we needed somewhere to cook the chickens. One of the members volunteered her place of work, and we had to borrow pressure cookers."

Many of the members were wary of working with pressure cookers, but Faircloth assured them that she was experienced with using them. However, during the cooking, one of the pressure valves exploded.

"We thought about getting a firehose," she said. "I felt bad because I had said I knew what I was doing, and we were at someone else's workplace."

Faircloth, an employee of Boatmen's Bank of Cape Girardeau, is a native of Cape Girardeau and has a 12-year-old daughter, Amber. She attended Notre Dame High School and completed two years at Southeast Missouri State University.