By DIANE GASPER-O'BRIEN

dobrien@dailynews.net

Karen Nowak ran her fingers across the cover of the brand new dictionary she held in her other hand and smiled.

"I still remember getting mine," said Nowak, a teacher at Kennedy Middle School.

Coincidentally, Nowak was one of the first sixth-graders in Ellis County to receive a dictionary from the Hays Optimist Club when she was a student at Victoria Middle School back in the fall of 1985.

Tuesday was the 25th annual dictionary distribution by Optimist members.

"I used mine all through college," said Nowak, who went to Fort Hays State University and has been teaching at Kennedy for 13 years.

Since that first year, more than 9,400 Random House Webster dictionaries have been given to each sixth-grade class in Ellis County schools.

"Schools really look forward to it," said Optimist member Gary Wentling, who has participated in all 25 dictionary distributions through the years. "And we have a lot of fun with it, too."

"It is fun," agreed Dave Moody, one of the Optimists who handed out the books at Kennedy.

"I remember one year going to Munjor and delivering three dictionaries," he said of a small elementary school in the county which has since closed.

The Optimists order the dictionaries from Hastings Books in Hays, and Wentling makes up a schedule of Optimist volunteers to deliver on a certain day.

Wentling was saddened to have to look for a fill-in at Felten Middle School for the 2009 distribution.

Dick Heil, longtime Optimist member who had participated in the project for about 10 years and usually handed out dictionaries at Felten, died Saturday.

"He'll definitely be missed," Wentling said of Heil. "Always willing to volunteer his time."

The local civic club is able to donate the dictionaries thanks in large part to its annual Christmas tree sales in the Walmart parking lot.

The Optimists' proceeds from the Christmas tree sales go to projects for youth in the county such as improvements to parks, Project Graduation for the two local high schools and numerous athletic and academic events both in schools and around the city.

The Optimists had asked administrators in Hays USD 489 back in the mid-1980s for a project to help out schools.

Someone came up with the idea of giving dictionaries to students, and it caught on.

Even as technology has made the use of a dictionary readily available on computers, Wentling said there's still a demand for the book version.

"The teachers and kids still want them," he said. "They want the physical book to look at."

"It's something you don't have to turn on, you don't have to reboot it," Moody told Kennedy students Tuesday. "It's there when you need it."