RB Rotary Club Meeting
July 15, 2021
Co-President Athenea opened the meeting and introduced Mike Stelman who led us in the pledge. He started with a wonderful recorded speech from his phone by a man that introduced himself as "Old Glory"! It was a very moving and informative speech about our flag and all the events it appeared at since it was made to represent our country. Then Joel Doss gave the inspirational speech, Toby Westbrook was our greeter and Joel followed by leading us in the Welcome Song after our guests were introduced. Steven Brown, a very special guest, joined us on Zoom. He has a wonderful history with Rotary and was my District Governor when I was president, way back in 1995-96!!
Don Glover announced that Carol Kasser is planning a Celebration of Life for her husband on Sept. 11th. John Kasser was a proud member of our club and very active until he fell ill. He was such a loss to all of us. More details to follow. There will also be a Poway-Scripps Parade this year and they are asking for volunteers. Please contact Don Glover for details. Also on 9/11, there will be a District Conference that should be fun and exciting as it will be a weekend in Coronado!! A sign up sheet with details will be out soon.
Bob Vaughn is our new club representative and he awarded David King a new pin representing his contribution of $3,000 to The Rotary Foundation. Congratulations Dave!! He, Mike Stelman, Mike Fuqua and a few others are also putting together plans to start working on our annual sale of Poinsettias for the holidays. Unfortunately the price has gone up from the growers but only by $10.00. There will still be 8 plants per box for $110 and they will be ready for pick up on Dec. 3rd. Let's see if we can surpass our record set last year and continue to fund the Peace Bags and Corporal swords awarded to the top Marines at Miramar. It's a great cause!
President Athenea thanked our volunteers, Co-President Alex, Zoom Masters Alan Turner and Dave Brooks, Scribe Karen Stelman, Newsletter publisher Bill Angus, Sgt-at-Arms Bill Brehm, Front Desk Judy Lutticken, Pat Chaffee and Joel Doss and Photographer James Kaspar.
Arilla did double duty with Family of Rotary and Fine Mistress. She announced that John O'Neill will be back next week and fined all men who wore sandals to our meeting. She's tough!! We collected at the meeting $ 158.00 in Happy Bucks/ Fines at the meeting.
Co-President Alex introduced our speaker, Brigadier General Paul Lebidine, US Marine Corps (retired). He commanded 16,000 troops, had 7 combined tours including 3 in Iraq and 1 in Afghanistan. The Russians occupied that territory for 10 years and then left. The Taliban captured the country from 1996 to 2001. Our support gave the country back to Afghanistan from 2003 to 2009. The Nato mission started then and our troop surge gave the people back their country. The 2015 surge was ever present with two more missions to secure the country which rightfully belonged to the people. The US remained for a total of 20 years to train and support their troops until they could hand over total control to Afghanistan. Sadly, our troops are now on their way home as our country withdraws the majority of US troops from there. This will leave their country in a very vulnerable state. The Taliban has quickly moved in and are expected to over run the existing areas in the very near future.
Our next weeks speaker will be Dr. Kevin Murphy, Neurosurgeon, who will join us on July 22 at noon.
Have a great week and see you then,
Karen Stelman, Scribe
