Three members of the leadership team of this year's Notre Dame Prep Interact Club joined the Pontiac Rotary Board meeting in August. In the photo, Sam (club president) and David (Interact Liaison) are joined by Mateo Vargas, Interact President, Sofia Monahan, VP, and Paula Ceular, Treasurer. These three impressive young people shared their "Why Rotary" and helped us understand how an Interact Club works in the busy high school environment. We emphasized our interest in their activities, and willingness to support them as needed. The lines of communication are open; let's make a difference in Pontiac together!
Rick & Kathy's set out on a big adventure to Grand Haven on Saturday, August 29, 2026 . This adventure happened in the form of a one-day road trip to Grand Haven.
If you note, on the right, in the back, we definitely had an Eddie sighting at our last Summer Eating of the summer of 2026.
Well, as they say, another one bites the (Walton Blvd) dust. We are in Lions' pre-season!
Despite the rain in the morning, it turned out to be a lovely day! (And no that is not Kaj's deck!)
If you want to get out on a Friday evening... There is the opening reception for 1st Annual "Brook Does Pontiac Car Art Show" is at the Pontiac Creative Arts Center on Friday August 7, 2026 at 6:00 PM
Mission Impossible to Dogwood's Kitchen and Bar, it was NOT...unless you came down Walton Blvd from the west.
Well, we had one interesting evening! It was full of surprises!
This week we traveled through the smoke and haze and found ourselves at M1 Grill, where the air conditioning and filtering system was working just fine!
We visited Lemon Grass Thai Restaurant located at Centerpoint Parkway and Opdyke roads. And we, definitely not the only ones! It is a very popular lunch spot.
This week we celebrated 250 years of independence, and we also celebrated the World Cup by going to Ghost Modern Mexican!
This week, we visited the Webster Community Center, formerly Webster Elementary. We last toured the site in May 2022, when the school was barely recognizable. What a transformation it has undergone since our last visit. We got a tour from Katie Romska, the Operations Director, who explained that there are Twenty-six classrooms that are almost completely renovated and rented, with only four still available. The center will include a coffee shop with street access serving Plain & Fancy Coffee, Honor Community Health Pediatrics, Head Start, Webster Community Market with a full line of groceries, Pontiac Theatre IV, A Courageous Voice, a robotics program, and an indoor bus stop with bathrooms and vending machines.
This week, we heard from Lisa Varnier, a retired attorney from Blue Cross Blue Shield, a former assistant Oakland County prosecutor, and a current board member of El Centro Multicultural/La Familia. For the past 15 years, she has been supporting Pontiac’s immigrant community and sharing “red cards,” along with explaining what they are and how they are used. She also talked about the several types of green cards and visas, the difference between naturalized and birthright citizenship, the status of DACA, and the sensitive issues surrounding ICE.
This week we took a field trip to the Jay Shop in Pontiac and met with Brian Wright, the Director of New Product Development. The Jay Shop is a nonprofit vocational rehabilitation organization where real industrial work creates purpose, stability, and opportunity. Brian explained the history of the Jay Shop, which was established in 1966. Today, they employ 106 people, which include management and line employees, which work on spring assembly kit trays for Ford Motor Company’s F-150. They work one daily shift and meet deadlines of 14,014 trays a day, it is an amazing job opportunity for people with barriers to work in this environment verses other types of employment. Brian’s dream would be to see the Jay Shop grow enough to bring on a second shift. We all hope that dream comes to fruition.
This week we had a field trip to Honor Community Health in its new location on Cass Avenue. What was formally the Webber Media Arts Academy is now a new health center with walk-in services providing high quality care to individuals and families regardless of ability to pay, insurance status or place of residence. Our host was Chris Jackson who gave us a tour of the facility along with Oakland 360 walk-in care center and introduced us to CEO Debra Brinson and Chief Medical Officer Dr. Nikhil Hemady. We got to hear how excited and proud everyone was that HCH will become Michigan’s first family Medicine Residency Program that identifies as a Federally Qualified Health Center based Teaching Health Center. Chris hopes that they can make District One the medical anchor of Pontiac.
This week Rick David and Payton Triplette started a discussion about the revitalization of Pontiac. The comparison was made between Detroit and Pontiac, which have both seen bankruptcy, population decline, fractured infrastructure and negative perception. Detroit is now thriving, but Pontiac is still floundering trying to find a way to turn around its city. This conversation brought a lot of talk about what could be done and what needs to be done to make Pontiac a city that brings people and business back to the city. We all agreed that an hour of time is just not enough time for all the dialog for this subject, which is why we will turn this into a 3-part discussion.
It was field trip week, and we went to the Pontiac Transportation Museum. Some of us had been to the museum when it first opened in May 2024, but we were all surprised how much has changed, or should we say grown. When we first visited, only phase 1 was open; now phase 1 is entirely different, and phase 2 has opened. Rick only had about a half hour to give us a quick tour, and that was not enough time. The cars, the history, the memorabilia are all amazing, even if you are not a car buff, there is something for everyone to enjoy. And they are working on Phase 3. This place is such a gem that visitors from eighteen other countries have visited the museum, and we cannot wait for phase 3 to open.
This week our speaker was Charles White of Peer Pressure Elite Wrestling. Charles was there for two reasons, one to thank us for our charitable donation in purchasing the belts for his wrestling team and to talk about a collaboration between himself and Pontiac Rotary to get a football field installed in Rotary Park. Right now, they use the park 6 days a week (during the season) for practicing but play their games at Pontiac High School which costs them $4000.00 per season, and that is very costly to a team with little financial backing.
conference room on the right of entrance
Pontiac, MI 48341
United States of America