More than 200 members of the Tellico Village Computer Users Club gathered last week at the Tugaloo beach pavilion for the group’s annual summer picnic. The club has grown to nearly 1,000 members in Tellico Village, making it one of the largest groups in the community, club president Gary Robertson said.

Last Wednesday’s picnic set a new record for attendance to the luncheon. The picnic in 2015 drew 159 people.

“It’s only $15 to join (the club), but there’s over 800 members in the club,” John Kish, club member and co-coordinator of the picnic, said with a laugh. “Thank God they all didn’t sign up for this or we’d have to go to Neyland Stadium.”


Kish and his wife, Eleanor, helped put together the outing.

Sandwiches were provided by Firehouse Subs, and club members brought various side dishes.

Elaine Nagelson brought coleslaw for the picnic.

“It’s a little more on the social side,” Nagelson said. “This is really our big social of the year. The rest of the year we have meetings, but you don’t always have enough time to talk to everybody. So this whole day is just set aside to have fun. We’re really not going to have a meeting. The rest of the time we have meetings.”

The club sets aside funds in its annual budget for the picnic. The outing has taken place the last five or six years, Robertson said.

“This is a social activity, and that’s why we do it,” Robertson said. “There’s not going to be a lot of education tonight. ... This is sort of what we do, and you’ll note that a lot of the groups in the Village have a summer picnic and so do we.”

Nagelson joined the club in 2014 after retirement. She said she found the club useful because of its intentions to keep Villagers informed about the increasingly technological world.

“I think a lot of people join because in this computer world we need that first level support because something goes wrong with the computer and most of us are, like, (we) put our heads in our hands and (wonder) what are we going to do,” Nagelson said. “So that first level support, and they educate us, so we’ve got some good education programs each month that we meet. They talk about different things.

“This year they have added the app of the month,” she added. “So we’re now expanding from the computer and the desktop and the laptop onto the smartphones and the tablets.”

The club offers numerous services in the community, including educational tours, the Technology Access Program, which provides computers for students, and first level support for its members.

Robertson said computer support was a big reason why Villagers join the group.

“We have several people who provide first level support to the members when they have a computer problem,” Robertson said. “We don’t do hardware problems, but we help people with software problems, and you’d be amazed at how many people need a little guidance once in a while — they get a virus or whatever.

“Our guys, there’s four or five of them. We have people for both Macs (Macintosh systems) and PCs (personal computers), and so if you’re a computer club member it’s a free service,” he added.

The Technology Access Program provides children and others in the community refurbished computers free of charge. Robertson said since the program’s inception about 15 years ago, the club has given out “pretty close” to 7,000 computers.

“The computer club does a lot of good, and we have what we call a TAP program here,” Kish said. “People bring their old computers, and they (club members) rehab them and give them away to needy families that can’t afford them and so forth.”

Robertson said TAP is funded through a United Way of Loudon County grant.

“We’re able to get grants from places like the United Way because we’re a nonprofit and we’re helping children and needy people,” Robertson said.

For more information on the Tellico Village Computer Users Club, visit www.tvcuc.org.