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Wally Cole gave the invocation while Bonnie Denzel led us in song and exercise. Pepe was our sole guest, besides the speaker. President Steve reported on the tree planting and we were told that the Mark Olson Dollars for Scholars Scholarship went to Dustin Norgren. President Steve also presented an amber stone to Mary Pettit which was given in honor of her father at the District Conference Necrology Service in Thunder Bay. There was a Rotary Minute Plus Quiz based on the May Rotarian; we all must have been fascinated by the pictures as we didn't do too well remembering the content! Tim Hunt led off the bragging, reporting that Jamie Larson had caught him at the Holiday store wearing his wife's Kiwanis hat. Lori Larson told us she was in Rochester last week so missed our meeting but came back with a lot of good ideas from the make-up meeting she attended. Katie Johnson reported that her son was at the National BPA Conference in Dallas and placed sixth in the nation in the digital media category. He also received the American Legion Scholarship. Randy Kempfer indicated he appreciated Anthony Nordan's presentation on the Salvation Army at the United Way Board meeting earlier that day. Brad Hoganson put in money for missing some meetings, remarked his former club called this time "Happy & Sad Dollars" and he was contributing for both because his daughter came home from New Jersey . . . with a boy. Okay, this is embarrassing -- one of our members reported that a son went out for baseball and when he went to bat the first time introduced himself to the umpire and catcher -- I can't remember who told us that, but I admire their parenting skills. Gene Manning put in a dollar for those who spoke and remembered to talk into the microphone. Katie Johnson introduced Barry Fitzgibbons, Deputy Sheriff with the Otter Tail County Sheriff's Office; both Barry and Katie had chaperoned the high school band trip to Hollywood this school year (and his daughter was also competing in Dallas last week, finishing in the top ten). Barry talked about attending the FBI National Academy in Quantico, Virginia from the beginning of January to mid-March this year. There were participants from every state and 18 other countries; Barry's roommate was a sergeant from Reno, Nevada. The Academy started back in 1935 but was then called the FBI Police Training School, changing its name in 1962. Each year there are four sessions of the Academy held, with 225 participants. The Academy is held at the Marine Corp base and FBI cadets (who are "super polite") are training at the same time. At the end there is a 6.2 mile obstacle course that all but one of Barry's class completed (and the one not for lack of trying but because of terrible knee issues), called the "Yellow Brick Road." The average participant in the Academy was 45 years old and had 16 years of law enforcement service. He reported that 90% of the forensic tests run by the FBI are not for the federal government but for local enforcement agencies. Barry himself has been in a supervisory position since 2003 as a sergeant, moving up to lieutenant in 2011. In 2013 he was nominated by our sheriff to participate in the Academy, and it was five years before he got in -- some people wait 15 years. The courses taken are accredited through the University of Virginia, with 17 units of college credits available; some people were able to get their masters degree through these additional credits. Barry's classes were emotional intelligence (probably the best class he took notwithstanding misgivings going into it), physical exercise, drugs and forensics. There were also a lot of breakout presentations, with the speaker mentioning one on autism and his favorite, one on Child Abduction Rapid Deployment (CARD). On weekends they would head out to enjoy the area, with Barry making a trip to New York City to see the 9-11 Memorial, telling us there are 37,000 police persons in that city. Their class' silent auction fundraiser brought in over $40,000, the best ever. His takeaways were that he had a once in a lifetime opportunity, was able to network with the top one percent of law enforcement executives in the world, and everyone is dealing with the same issues -- mental health, drugs, recruiting and retention to name a few. This was a very interesting program and thanks to Katie for arranging it and to Barry for his presentation. |
