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RANCHO BERNARDO ROTARY
ZOOM MEETING, MAY 14, 2020
President Dave called the meeting to order and led the reciting of the Four Way Test. The Pledge of Allegiance followed. Maguy Feghali gave the Inspirational message, reading from Jennifer Weiner’s “What I’ve Learned”. Forty-six members were connected to the meeting today. President Dave thanked Mike Fuqua for arranging our ZOOM meetings, and thanked todays scribe, Rz Norris, filling in for Dave Brooks.
Joel led a fractured Welcome Song for our Virtual Rotary Guests: Marta King, District Governor, Carol Kasser, who has been inducted as an Honorary Club Member, and Dan Gensler, a long time Rotarian and District Governor elect nominee 2021 (among other distinguished titles).
Past president, Doug Dawson, said the Promotion Party Committee could not find a venue large enough to offer suitable “Social Distancing”, so we would have a Virtual Promotion Party for the club on ZOOM, to take place on June 25th, at 5:30 pm. The planning committee says it will be a fun event.
District Governor Marta King was attending her 4th virtual meeting for the day. She thanked the Club for it’s fine work this past year. She announced a District Promotion event for June 29th, that will be a smaller size event with adequate distance spacing. A virtual sharing event on June 25th, from 12:00 to 1:00, will include members of Rotoract and Interact. A virtual Chat for new members will be on May 26th, 12:00-1:00. In addition, the virtual Convention from Hawaii, June 20-26th, will feature previously scheduled speakers. She said she feels blessed to be a part of the Rotary Family. Information on these events can be found on the District website.
Dan Barrios said our club is near 100% participation for member contributions to the Foundation this year. We have reached the 100% mark for the past 4 years. He has 10 awards to present, but none of those persons are on ZOOM with us today.
Don Glover mentioned the $14,000 Scholarship awards, and that two of the awards were given to special needs students. He said more grant money will be available in the fall, and that anyone with ideas for grants should submit them. Arilla mentioned that the Pomerado News Journal had a frontpage article about the Clubs’ recent area Grants and gift cards for First Responders.
Don announced that the Foundation Board had accepted Judy Lutticken’s offer to serve on the Board again and requested a vote from club members for her election. A yes vote by a show of hands, with no “no” votes, confirmed her election to the Board.
Pat Chaffee said $7,024 in Happy Bucks has been donated via our online connections to date. He asked that the donor stipulate whether the money is for the Foundation or for the Club, and clarified that the correct address for Club donations is PO Box 28005, San Diego, 92128-0005.
Arilla said she had no new Family of Rotary announcements. Changing hats, she acted as Fine Mistress today. She gave no fines, though said she was thinking that pink shirts for men should be reinstated as a fine item, along with shorts and sandals. As a lead in for Happy Bucks, Mike played a video of Little Richard, who recently passed away, singing “Tutti Frutti”. Happy Bucks were donated by ten members.
Pat Chaffee introduced our speaker (the first “speaker” for our ZOOM meetings). Dan Gensler is a long time Rotarian, and has received many awards for his work with Rotary, and held many positions, including being the District Governor Elect Nominee for our District for 2021. He said his speech is a “back to the future analogy” of the polio epidemic (prior to the introduction of a vaccine in the 1950’s), and COVID-19. He also included the history of Rotary’s early involvement with the polio epidemic, establishing the Rotary End Polio Now worldwide campaign. He spoke of his trip to Eritrea to help administer vaccine to children there. He said Rotary is “changing lives and giving a future to countries we will never see”, and quoted Mother Theresa: “Love provides service, service provides peace”.
The next virtual meeting will be May 21st, 11:00am. Look for Mikes’ email with the ZOOM link on Sunday and save it.
Meeting was adjourned.