A dozen members (10 Rotary + 1 Rotaract + Dean’s wife Angela) assembled 240 Neighbor Bags for our Missoula Neighbors in Need at The Salvation Army. Present were Ryan Boyd, Jim Hutcheson, Royce Engstrom, Dean Fiedler, Angela Fiedler, Mike Schauf, Rick Oncken, Diane Dawson, Patti Schulte, Kathy Schulte, Cady Scoonover (Rotaract), Victoria Emmons Bouzina. The work was finished in record time! The work crew completed its assignment in less than 30 minutes!

The Rotary Club of Missoula meets Wednesdays at the Missoula Country Club, 3850 Old US 93, Missoula, MT 59804
Register for Lunch in the Events section below 
Club Information

Welcome to Rotary Club of Missoula. Join us for lunch! For membership inquiries, contact Royce Engstrom, Royce.Engstrom@mso.umt.edu.   Thank you!

Missoula

Rotary Connects the World 

We meet In Person & Online
Wednesdays at 11:45 AM
Missoula Country Club
3850 Old U.S. Highway 93 S.
Missoula, MT 59804
United States of America
Our club offers meetings in person and also via Zoom. We meet weekly at Missoula Country Club, usually with live music and a guest speaker The last Wednesday each month is a fellowship gathering. Parking is free and easily accessible.
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Is it FUN?

District Conference brings snow, rain and fun!

Four members of the Rotary Club of Missoula joined other Rotarians from around the state who attended the 2022 District 5390 Conference held May 6-7 in Fairmont Hot Springs, including PE Royce Engstrom, Treasurer Kathy Schulte, IPP & AG Victoria Emmons Bouzina, and PP Martha Ripley (via Zoom). Royce and Kathy represented the club at the District Annual Meeting with our club’s two delegate votes. The number of votes allocated per club depends on the membership count.
 
At the Friday afternoon session, DG Mike Mayott praised all the many leaders throughout the district, including governors-elect, assistant governors, district chairs and club presidents, for their support this year. 
 
“It’s not about me, not about the district,” said Mike, a theme throughout his year as DG. “It’s about the boots on the ground. We are here to support clubs and we are here for that purpose.”
 
Friday’s agenda included a very reverent memorial for the Rotarians who died over the past two years, including those from the Missoula club -- Dr. Bob Seim, John Talbot, and Dr. John Browne. 
 
Betsy Mulligan-Dague, chair of the district Peacebuilding & Conflict Prevention Committee, discussed the Rotary Peace Challenge, a timely topic that will be stressed throughout the next year. She discussed a desire to proliferate peace poles in Montana.
 
Chris Wright presented an option for clubs to consider using a debit card for Rotary expenses. 
 
PDG Roy Beekman, who as the district’s alternate representative for the RI Council on Legislation never thought he’d have to attend, relayed his experience representing the district after all. The Council, which only meets every three years, was held April 10-14 in Chicago and on Zoom with attendees from all over the world and language translations galore. Roy said there are 523 districts worldwide and 522 participated. There were 324 Rotarians who attended in person and 198 who attended online. 
 
“Imagine 200 people on a Zoom meeting and every one of them has an opinion!” he said. 
 
Roy explained there were hours of discussion, translations and votes, but he mentioned a couple of items that passed, including an addition of DEI to the bylaws and a new pilot program for governing structure that will test first in Britain, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand. He said the Council also approved dues increase to $82 over the next four years. Roy directed everyone to MyRotary.org to check out the Council on Legislation pages.
 
“The most moving moment of the whole session was when RI President Shekhar Mehta of India introduced the delegate from the Ukrainian town of Kyiv,” said Roy. “He had two lengthy standing ovations. To date, according to the Rotary magazine, Rotary has given over $10 million to the Ukrainian refugee effort.”
 
Other speakers Friday included PDG Bill Spath, Polio Plus Chair; DG Mike who spoke about RYLA on behalf of RYLA Chair Levi Merkel, and about district grants which Mike will continue to coordinate next year; Dick King, Foundation Chair, who updated giving to Rotary Foundation; and DGN Rick Powers who focused on the in-progress strategic plan for the district.
 
Friday evening, attendees joined for cocktails and dinner with keynote speaker William Mercer, who spoke about Living a Life of Service. Before the buffet began, the traditional bidding started to see whose table would be allowed first in line -- the proceeds all going to Ukrainian relief via the Rotary District 5390 Foundation. The table with Missoula, Missoula Sunrise and Bozeman Noon club Rotarians won that bidding with a $360 donation! We must have been hungry!!
 
The silent auction items were also displayed beautifully with gifts donated from clubs all around the district, including Missoula’s lovely basket of Montana items assembled by Diane Dawson. Auction bidding continued Saturday night and our club’s basket sold for over $150. The big winner was the donation from the Polson club, a basket including a round of golf, stay at a local hotel, dinner and more. That item sold for $1,150! Overall, the auction raised $5,000 for Ukrainian refugee relief, according to PDG Sandy Carlson.
 
Saturday inspirations
Saturday’s session opened with an inspiration from PDG Sandy Wong, followed by DG Mike’s pounding of the gavel officially opening the Annual Business Meeting. Following a report from District Treasurer Jim Oates and approval of the minutes from last year, DG Mike asked for a vote among club delegates to determine the procedure in which the DG for 2025-26 would be selected. According to the district bylaws and Rotary International requirements, there are three options: (1) a nominating committee, (2) Club ballot, or (3) a vote at district conference. The vote taken of the clubs favored a vote at the district conference. DG Mike then requested nominations from the floor.
 
“I’m one of those people who read manuals,” said Mike, a retired IRS investigator. “RI Manual of Procedures is complicated. Our own manual is easier to read now. How the DG is selected is determined by RI rules.”
 
PE Royce nominated Kathy Schulte for DG 2025-26. AG Lucy Smith from Kalispell was also nominated. After nominations closed, the two candidates sat together talking like old friends, awaiting the outcome. Following a vote, Lucy squeaked out a win and will be our DG for 2025-26. Lucy has been active in the district for many years. Thank you, Royce, for nominating Kathy. Her name is now out in the public for a possible future spot in the DG Lineup. And what a great DG she will make some day!!
 
Following the close of the Annual Business Meeting, presentations continued from International Chair Terri Smiley who presented a long list of projects in the district, including our club’s involvement in the Western Montana Coalition to support water projects in Guatemala. She mentioned that there was discussion about applying for a future global grant for a project here in Montana in conjunction with one of the Native American tribes.
 
Mark Dvarishkis, secretary of the Missoula Centennial Club presented a project his club has implemented in partnership with the Rotary Club of Zamosc, Poland, to help support Ukrainian refugees, and is asking for support from other clubs.
 
AG Lucy Smith discussed a fundraiser to support Rotary Foundation. She plans to ride in a 100-mile Rotary WooHoomanie Bike-A-Thon and invites other Rotarians to support her or ride along, too.
 
The next item on the agenda was dubbed “Speed Dating” by DG Mike. Club presidents from around the district had three minutes to talk about their year’s accomplishments. It was impressive to see the depth and breadth of all that Rotary clubs in Montana have accomplished. Some clubs had issues to overcome, and others did a service project each month. One club changed its name, another volunteered at a circus, and another cleaned up highways. Others gave out dictionaries, while yet another club raised $35,000 with a car show. The different projects and the funds raised were numerous and varied.
 
PE Royce, Kathy and AG Victoria represented the Missoula club and President Dean Fiedler, who could not attend due to a work commitment. They gave a rounding three-minute overview of some of our club’s most outstanding accomplishments -- 9 new members, 25+ fellowship activities, thousands of dollars in Happy Bucks donated to one project after another, water projects in Guatemala, youth awards, scholarships, RYLA, Rotaract, etc.
 
Additional presentations were made on Rotary Youth Exchange (RYE) by YE Chair Tracy McNew as she introduced outbound students; and Ed Handl, WGIPP, spoke about the Waterton Glacier Peace Park and its upcoming conference in September. 
 
Saturday afternoon was given over to the 5th Avenue of Service -- Is it FUN? Rotarians chose whether to play golf, do some wine tasting in Phillipsburg, or swim in the Fairmont’s hot spring waters. The weather challenged us a bit as a huge rainstorm complete with grapple blew over, bringing heavy winds. After a brief delay to await clear skies, five golfers braved the wind to play nine holes (AG Victoria and PDG Sandy Carlson among them) and three gentlemen joining them played a full 18 holes. Another group had a great time in Phillipsburg, they said, hosted by the Phillipsburg Rotary. Swimmers at one point had to evacuate the pool due to lightning, but that delay brought about fresh waters to loll around. All in all, a FUN afternoon!
 
Saturday evening’s dinner highlight was speaker Vicki Puliz, Rotary International Director representing Zones 26/27. The Nevada resident’s poignant words are always inspirational. In addition, more inspiration came from the outbound youth exchange students who gave their “This is me” presentation in the language of the countries to which they will be going. Students are headed to Italy, Taiwan, Japan and Brazil.
 
District Conference 2022 ended officially with Rotarians writing checks if they had a winning bid for an auction item -- all for a good cause. The camaraderie continued late into the evening with conversation and laughter over after-dinner drinks as friendships cemented even further. Rotary is about friendship, too.
 

Happy Buck's - Essential Eats
Essential Eats designated Happy Bucks recipient for current quarter
Sara Wecker, member of the Rotary Club of Missoula Sunrise and executive director of Essential Eats, offered an overview of her all-volunteer nonprofit organization, designated as recipient of this quarter's Happy Bucks proceeds.  Essential Eats, she explained, is an all-virtual, all-volunteer non profit. Farm Link serves indigenous populations as of 2017. Rocky nation serves about 1,000 people who live in rural areas with no grocery store, no buses, trains or other public transportation, and very isolated tribal lands. Walmart is providing food each week. 
 
The Sunrise club began working with Essential Eats on a bike project a couple of years ago and invited the Missoula club to join them. Tribal members are in need of new bicycles, new food and new gifts for residents living in these rural areas. Willing to partner on their bike program, a partnership with Walmart allows Rotarians to gift bicycles to those in need. Rotarians assemble the new bikes, which cost $65 per bike, a reduced price from Walmart.   Sara said they hope to assemble and donate about 500 bikes this summer. The Essential Eats board members come from all over the state. She said her bookkeeper is in Portland, but they are able to use Facebook as a medium to reach out and meet people and understand what they need on tribal lands. There is a massive suicide problem with indigenous people, she revealed. Covid deaths are also higher among the tribal nations. The life expectancy of males in that population is only 56 years old.
 
"It is hard to realize what they are dealing with and we try to help them have food to eat and bikes to get around," said Sara.   
 
Happy Bucks will support the project. Learn more at Essential Eats Distributors, found on Facebook. Sara said she started this organization because the Blackfoot food bank shut down and it was going to be hard for them. She began the nonprofit with $1,200 raised through volunteers. She works with the Orphan Green chain that saves high-risk people, and Farm Link, a student-run organization that shipped 40,000 pounds of potatoes. Tribal citizens are accustomed to eating eight pounds of buffalo a day and most are unable to digest sugar. There is a history that hasn’t been told about interactions. Sara said that the bike program was started to build a way for folks to get around.   Groups get together to build the bikes and get them delivered to the tribes. 
 
"We are hoping to do a service project this summer to build bikes at the Comfort Inn," said Dean.  
MRF News
Chris Nowlen named to MRF board
Congratulations to Chris Nowlen who was recently elected to serve on the board of directors of the Missoula Rotary Foundation (MRF). Chris will complete the three-year term started last year by Jim Hutcheson who stepped down from his position on the board for family reasons. 
 
Chris is a former member of the Rotary Club of Missoula board of directors, having served a three-year term several years ago. He has also served in leadership roles on professional golf association boards. Chris is general manager of the Missoula Country Club and responsible for the great service that Rotarians receive during our meetings and special events there.
 
Other Missoula Rotarians serving on the MRF board include Kurt Ingold and immediate past president Victoria Emmons Bouzina.  

HONEUR FRANÇAIS

Thanks to Rotary, Minot Maser’s father honored by the French Consul Général

Not many people are honored with the distinction of “chevalier”, or knight, of the Légion d’Honneur, France’s highest award. Clark Maser, 96, father of Missoula Rotarian Minot Maser, was the fortunate recipient of such award this month at a special ceremony in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The elder Maser’s long journey to finally receive the award came about thanks to the Rotary Club of Missoula and a son’s determination to honor his father.
 
A year and a half ago, Laurence Markarian of Hamilton, MT, was invited to speak to our Rotary club on December 9, 2020. Appointed by the Consul Général de France in San Francisco, Markarian is the Consul Honoraire for France in Montana. Among other duties, part of her role is ceremonial. After World War II, France wanted to honor the many U.S. veterans who helped liberate the country from the Nazis. They began to seek out and honor U.S. veterans around the country. Markarian has presented 17 veterans from Montana the Medal of Legion of Honor for their service in helping to liberate France from Nazi oppression. 
 
Born and raised in France, Laurence lives in the Bitterroot. Her presentation at MIssoula Rotary club was well received and garnered many questions. She spoke about the importance of etiquette and understanding French culture. She also mentioned the Legion of Honor awards.
 
Minot Maser was in attendance that day and brought up the fact that his father Clark was one of those veterans who helped liberate France. Thus began Minot’s quest to honor his elderly father. 
 
Markarian explained to Minot that since his father lived in Vermont, he would need to work with the Consul Général in that part of the country. Not long after, Minot relocated to the northeast himself to care for his father who had spent most of his career as a successful attorney in San Francisco. The Maser family had long owned a seasonal home in Greensboro, Vermont, nearby where his father preferred to relocate. Clark Maser now lives in Littleton, New Hampshire. 
 
From the Rotary presentation, Minot followed up with the French contact on the east coast and finally, this month, his father was honored at a private ceremony at the official residence of Arnaud Mentré, France’s consul general, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 
 
“You are a true hero for the United States, but you are also a hero for us, the French people,” said Mentré, according to a story in the Boston Globe. “It was one of the darkest hours of my country.”
 
In 1945, a then 19-year-old Clark Maser lay fighting for his life on a cold battlefield in France. His legs had three wounds and he was waiting for his life to end.
 
“I’m going to die,” he thought, as German mortar shells exploded all around him. “And I’ve never kissed a girl before.”
 
The elder Maser survived, unlike many of his comrades in the Army’s 103rd Infantry Division.
 
Born into poverty in a Chicago boarding house, Minot’s father went on to attend Harvard Law School on the GI Bill. He represented companies such as US Steel, UPS, and even famous child actress Shirley Temple Black, according to Minot. Throughout his father’s very long and full life in both professional and community endeavors, Minot says the one and half months his father spent in France remains the most impactful.
 
“It was a good time to serve one’s country,” said Clark Maser, who enlisted as a private first class on his 18thbirthday. “I never realized I would end up here.”
 
The elder Maser became his company’s interpreter in France when he indicated on a questionnaire in fall 1944 that he knew a little French. He had only studied the language in seventh and eighth grades. Once in France, he was asked to inquire in each village when the enemy had last passed through and where good encampments could be found. He also admitted he had his first taste of alcohol in France, drinking the red wine offered by grateful townspeople to American troops. 
 
In addition to his father’s interpreter duties, Minot said his dad became a company messenger because he had run the quarter-mile in high school. When his unit came under intense mortar fire in Itterswiller, a village in Alsace, the 160 men in his unit were nearly wiped out. On his father’s final dash as a courier, Minot said that schrapnel struck his father in both legs, one wound coming within an inch of the femoral artery.
 
“It was akin to being rammed by a telephone pole,” Minot said.
 
The memories of those experiences remain indelible for Minot’s father, who ended up on a transport ship home and was discharged as 60 percent disabled as a result, according to Minot. 
 
Despite damage to his legs, Minot’s father eventually played tennis for University of California, Berkeley, where he received his undergraduate degree thanks to the GI Bill. Minot said his father also became engaged in social justice causes, organizing a student protest and boycott of a local bowling alley where Black people were only allowed to set pins, not to play. The rules were changed. In his later years, the elder Maser led an environmental effort to keep jet-skis off Caspian Lake in Greensboro. 
 
Vermont’s governor, Phil Scott, expressed thanks for Maser’s “selfless and heroic” wartime service in a tribute read by Lise Veronneau, France’s honorary consul in Vermont.  
 
Minot said that his father remains very interested in world affairs and follows the war in Ukraine on a daily basis. 
 
All those in attendance at the small ceremony honoring Clark Maser lifted their glasses of champagne to toast him as he humbly accepted their praise.
 
“I was lucky,” Clark Maser said. “Now, I’m just trying to live out my life the best I can.”
 
Source: Boston Globe & Minot Maser
 
Fellowship
Rotarians gather at Cambie Taphouse + Coffee
Fellowship Chair Andrew George is always up for trying out new spots in Missoula. Last week's fellowship location was Cambie Taphouse + Coffee in the Sawmill District, Cambie's second and newest location in Missoula. A dozen or so Rotarians gathered around the small, wooden tables at the establishment and shared tall tales and brew. Photo compliments of President Dean.
Fulbright Scholar
Rotaract member awarded Fulbright Scholarship
Congratulations to Camryn Vaughn, a member of Missoula Rotaract, who was recently awarded a Fulbright Scholarship. Camryn is a graduate of University of Montana with a major in political science and a minor in Russian. She will spend next year in Georgia, a state of the former USSR. 
 
Camryn is the program coordinator for the Mike and Maureen Mansfield Center located at UM's Mansfield Library. The Center offers a variety of internationally-focused speakers and programs throughout the year.

The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal to improve intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people of the United States and other countries through the exchange of persons, knowledge, and skills. Via the program, competitively-selected American citizens including students, scholars, teachers, professionals, scientists, and artists may receive scholarships or grants to study, conduct research, teach, or exercise their talents abroad; and citizens of other countries may qualify to do the same in the United States. The program was founded by United States Senator J. William Fulbright in 1946 and is considered to be one of the most widely recognized and prestigious scholarships in the world. The program provides approximately 8,000 grants annually – roughly 1,600 to U.S. students, 1,200 to U.S. scholars, 4,000 to foreign students, 900 to foreign visiting scholars, and several hundred to teachers and professionals.  -- Source: Wikipedia

 

Speakers
BG Dale Stovall
Jun 01, 2022 11:45 AM
The Roger Locher Rescue
Sylvia Allen Oman
Jun 08, 2022 11:45 AM
Missoula Symphony
President Dean Fiedler
Jun 15, 2022 11:45 AM
Club Assembly
Theresa Williams, LCSW,
Jun 22, 2022 11:45 AM
Missoula PD Crisis Intervention
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President's Message

Dean Fiedler

member photo
Well folks, we’re in the home stretch, as your club President, I’m a short timer. They say time flies when you’re having fun, so it’s hard to believe I have only five more meetings to lead before I pass the “pin” onto Royce.  I’m excited about these last few weeks, with our upcoming bike building project and the mystery dinner, it should be a nice finish to a good rotary year.
 
Dean Fiedler, Club President, 2021-2022 

 

 
President
Dean Fiedler
President-elect Nominee
Rick Oncken
President-elect
Royce Engstrom
Secretary
Ryan Boyd
Treasurer
Kathy Schulte
Past President
Victoria Emmons-Bouzina
Rotary Foundation, The
Donna Upson (Correia)
Membership Chair
Royce Engstrom
Public Relations Chair
Martha Ripley
Risk Management Officer
Wayne Hiett
Sergeant-at-Arms
Daniel Lee
Director - Community Service
Levi Thane
Director - Vocational Service
Donna Upson (Correia)
Director - Club Service
Mike Schauf
Director - Youth Service
Martha Ripley
Director - International Service
Rick Oncken
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