Last Week's Meetings
August 17, 2017
President David McCaughey called our meeting to order about 12:11 pm on August 17th, 2017. The weather was very nice after another abundance of rain hit the KC area. Charlie Huffman was our song leader for America The Beautiful and then President David was the leader for Pledge of Allegiance. Brad Kleindl provided a very warm invocation discussing how we need to embrace diversity while thanking the Lord for so many beautiful things he provides us. Jim Huffman was our welcomer for our two visiting guest and one visiting Rotarian.
Club Anniversaries were celebrated for Ed Corley 30 years & Keith Smith 40 years. This is very impressive and shows quite the commitment to Rotary Club 13! David King honored Joe Privitera who has been such a wonderful Rotarian. Joe has a family business, Mark One Electric, and you might have seen their trucks around town. He has worked at the family business for a lot more than a cup of coffee. Dan Neonen has the difficult task of filling Christy's shoes as Camp Leader, but he mentioned a touching moment when some handicap people thanked him for fixing the sidewalks at Camp. Dick Burnett's health is failing and if you wish to send him a card, please do at the following address:
Bickford Senior Living
c/o Mr. Dick Burnett
5350 West 61st Place
Mission, KS 66205
Jane Lee mentioned it's time to signup for bowling which begins September 6th and goes thought April. Cost is just $15 per week and we need players!
Jane Lee introduced our speaker, Mr. Carlos Gomez, the President of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. His main topic was the impact of the Hispanic community on the Kansas City economy. Mr. Gomez graduated from Washburn in Topeka, KS. He worked for Best Buy for 18 years and is credited with Best Buy's implementation of Latin music throughout the company. He is a former Planning Chairman for the city of Topeka. He's also very involved with fundraising, Junior Achievement and many other organizations throughout his career. He also noted he grew up in Lawrence, KS and he's a huge KU basketball fan (I mean who wouldn't be in their right frame of mind...)Mr. Gomez mentioned the KC Hispanic Chamber was founded in 1977 and is the 7th oldest in the USA out of 260 Hispanic Chambers. One of his first quotes was from Jerry Lopez with AMC stating: "I was taught facts don't lie." Mr. Gomez stated there are more startups from latinos than caucasians in the state of Missouri. He taught us Hispanic means someone is Spanish speaking and latinos means of Latin descent. Mr. Gomez noted St. Louis has shrunk by 3,000 people during this decade while Kansas City added 18,000 people and 15,000 of those people were Latino. He stated latinos are spending $1.5 Trillion in the USA annually and one of the big factors in Amazon's amazing growth.
Mr. Gomez noted Kansas State University has done an excellent job reaching out to the Latino community and the University of Kansas is now doing a better job copying Kansas State. He noted we need bilingual people in various occupations and the Hispanic community can provide this for corporations/companies. He talked about meeting Lee Iacocca & Joe Torre and how Joe was very influential with starting the Margarita Foundation. Mr. Gomez stated 24% of Latinos work in the construction industry and then the 2nd largest industry for Latinos is restaurants. He dived into Immigration reform and the 12 million illegal immigrants in the USA and how he wishes we could make everyone of them USA citizens overnight. We can't deport them or many industries would fail, especially the produce industry. He also noted Richard Nixon received the 2nd highest Latino vote ever behind only Barrack Obama.
President David added the following slide to end today's program:
Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, Nothing is going to get better, it's NOT!
Dr. Seuss quote
Well since my last time scribing 3 weeks ago, the Royals pitching has become a real burden and it's tough to win games 7-6 like yesterday. Let's hope the pitching is better down the final stretch and we can at least make the playoffs as a wild card since winning the division seems like a long shot now. I hope the next time I'm scribing, we are still relevant!
