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Rotary Club of Casper WY
Meeting Summary
01/19/2015
President Bill DeGraeve called the meeting to order promptly at 12:30 and welcomed everyone to our “Equality Day” Rotary meeting. Attendance was a little light with the holiday.
Inspiration, Pledge, 4-Way Test:
Kevin Christopherson
Greeters:
John Watson and Bob Auflick were the greeters today and John introduced guests:
Rob Doane introduced Derek Eskam (Northwestern Mutual);
Tom Broumley introduced Jaryd Unangst (Casper Orthopedics);
Victoria Ziton introduced her husband, Father Stephen Ziton;
Mark Owens introduced his daughter, Andrea George, and his brand-new grandson from Reno;
Nathan Bekke introduced Jason Adrians, (Editor of the Casper Star Tribune);
And of course our fabulous exchange student, Giulia, was in attendance. She reminded everyone of her “bucket list” of things she would like to do while she is in Wyoming. She heads to Steamboat Springs this weekend for Winter Orientation and skiing with all of the exchange students from around the District. President Bill presented her with her monthly stipend check.
Song and merriment:
Pinky Ellis filled in for Dennis Lower who is on winter break, and presented us with a good chu
ckle about an Irish police officer and a London attorney, and then Rob Doane filled in for Gary Pehrson who was off for the holiday, and led us in singing “America the Beautiful” with Brenda Peters playing the piano.
Family of Rotary:
President Bill welcomed back Tim Monroe who had spent the past month-plus wintering in Florida.
Rotarians of the Week:
Stan Lowe nominated Nathan Bekke for all of the state-wide awards the Casper Star Tribune had received at a recent competition.
Red to Blue Badge Ceremony:
Charles Schoenwolf was presented his blue badge with many accolades by his sponsor, Stan Lowe.
Classification Talk(s):
Stephanie Reid introduced herself to the club members. She is a native of Casper. After high school she went to Texas for college. She majored in marketing, and then went to law school. She was hired at Baker Hughes in Denver, which eventually got her back to this part of the country. Four years ago she was able to get a job as a land man with Kirkwood Oil and Gas, and is thrilled to be back in Casper. She recently got engaged too. Her introduction to Rotary was through her sponsor, Bill Schilling, whom she met through Leadership Wyoming.
Later in the meeting, Troy Mack also introduced himself to club members. He is originally from South Dakota farm country, and has always liked manual labor and being outdoors. Troy LOVES Wyoming. He moved here and got involved with the National Guard as a machinist and then moved on to Nabors Drilling with those skills sets. He also dabbles with selling real estate with Realty Executives. Troy met his sponsor, Sandy Widmer, when they were both hiking the mountain trail and she filled him in on Rotary Park. He decided that was a project and organization he wanted to be involved with here in Casper.
Club Announcements:
President Bill reminded the club about the fundraiser on Friday, February 13th to benefit the Casper Rotary Foundation. Sign-ups are on the tables. Mandy George also updated the club about the need for prizes for the auction, and the great table games the Rotaract club has organized.
PEN Jim Ruble read an email from Tyler Moore, our outbound exchange student to France. His exchange is going wonderfully, and he is “having the time of his life.” The club members responded with much applause.
President Bill also reminded the club members that Rotary Leadership Institute (RLI) #2 will be held in Casper on Saturday, Feb. 21st. Members can jump into the 3-part program at any time.
Dick Jay informed the membership that quarterly invoices were emailed/mailed out on December 30th. If you did not receive yours, let Lori Klatt or him know.
Program:
Today’s program was introduced by Nathan Bekke. The program featured Christine Petersen with the Casper Star-Tribune. Nathan stated that Christine is an outstanding colleague at the newspaper. She is Assistant Content Director and has been at the paper for seven years. She is in charge of outdoors and business news reporting. She has a degree from the University of Wyoming in Economics and Political Science. Christine introduced her program entitled, Wyoming’s Gold: Water in the Cowboy State” by letting us know that her father was a past member of our club. Christine discussed Governor Mead’s for water, and quoted him as saying, “Water is tied to everything.” Wyoming is the 5th driest state, and yet we are a ranching and agriculture state. Christine has studied the glacier content of the Wind River Range, and shared her primer on water with the club. Wyoming has four (4) river basins: 1- Missouri/Mississippi Rivers; 2 – Green/Colorado Rivers – which are part of the Great Divide closed basin; 3 – Snake/Columbia Rivers; and 4 – Great Salt Lake Basin. Water rights are only available for beneficial uses, and the majority of Wyoming’s are for agriculture uses. Wyoming is a headwater state, and outside of Wyoming the states want more water. Governor Mead has noted that Wyoming may not need the water now, but does not want to give up water rights for future needs. He wants to plan for Wyoming’s future and at this time there is no compensation to Wyoming for water use. The Colorado River Compact oversees water distribution to Nevada, Arizona, and California. The U.S. has stated that headwater states must allow a certain amount of water to go to lower basin states. With that in mind, Governor Mead released his Water Strategy last Thursday which has been in development since 2013. There are ten (10) goals identified for the State to complete over the next four years. Good planning is critical. Several great questions were asked from the members, and Rotarian John Lawson was on-hand to help answer them.
President Bill announced that next week’s program will be Leah Reeb, granddaughter of the Reverend James Reeb, who was killed during the Civil Rights march in Selma and featured in the recent movie of the same name. Her program is entitled, “Still Coping with the Inequities of Life.” The meeting adjourned at 1:25 p.m.
“Light Up Rotary”
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