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Rotary Club of Casper WY
Meeting Summary
03/16/2015
President Bill DeGraeve called the meeting to order at 12:33 welcoming all Rotarians and guests to Rotary. We then had a moment of silence in memory of a great man and friend, Mick McMurry who we lost this past week. After a moment of silence President Bill DeGraeve shared a memory of Mick and asked for others who would like to share a memory as well. We had a few who did so, Don Harris, Vickie Diamond, John Patterson and Susan Griffith. Our condolences go out to Rotarian Suzie McMurry and family for their loss of this great man. President Bill then gave us an update on the services being planned for Mick on Tuesday. The community is putting together a string of hands to represent all of the people whose lives Mick has touched, if you wish to have your hand represented you can print one off and put your name, the organization name and drop it off to the Boys and Girls club by 3:00 today. They will need volunteers to help string the hands together starting at 3:00 today so if you wish to help with that be there any time after 3:00. Tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. there will be a private family service held at Saint Patrick’s at 4th and Country Club, there will be parking available at the church and at Hobby Lobby. There will be Rotary volunteers helping escort people from Hobby Lobby to the Church. Then at 2:00 there will be the public service at the Event Center and Rotarians will be providing the usher services there. Thanks to Rotarian Liz Becher for organizing all of the volunteers who will be helping at these events and all of those who are helping.
Inspiration, Pledge, 4-Way Test:
A group of Interact Students were voluntold to lead us in the Inspiration, pledge and 4-way test, they did a great job. Thanks to Taylor Wilcox, Annicka Hoover, Laura Denton, Chi-Yian Dalton, and Bri Nichols;
Greeters:
Our Interact Students were our greeters and Susan Griffith introduced guests:
Susan introduced our visiting Rotarian Chris Small;
Chad Nelson introduced Steven Schnell;
Steve Domonkos introduced Ethan Dexter;
Cori Burton introduced Sgt. Joe Nickerson;
Rob Doane introduced Amber Pollock;
Robin Mundell introduced Alaina Stedille;
President Bill introduced our exchange student from Brazil, Giulia;
Song and merriment:
Pinky Ellis started us off with some great thoughts for this Saint Pat’s Day then Denise Prugh gave us a good chuckle then led us in singing “Cowboy Joe”
Family of Rotary:
Charles Schoenwolf let us know that Stan Lowe is working on rebuilding his strength back at home after another short hospital stay and he is feeling good enough to have visitors if anyone would like to stop by for a visit. John Watson let us know that Brenda Peters is home and doing well so she will hopefully be joining us soon at Rotary.
Rotarians of the week:
Mike McIntosh nominated Liz Becher for taking care of the minutes last week while he was out of town.
Cori Burton nominated our good friend Bill Sullivan who we lost last year as he was always wearing the green and celebrating on Saint Pat’s Day, he is dearly missed.
Club Announcements:
President Bill let us know that the club will be making a donation in memory of Mick McMurry to either the YMCA or the McMurry Foundation. If any club members would like to add a donation in with the club’s please feel free to do so and have that information to Bill by the end of the week.
Special Presentation:
We had a special guest today, Zach Hutchinson, previous Student of the month and son of Rotarian Hal Hutchinson. Zach is a Penn State medical student who will be headed to West Africa to the country of Senegal to serve the people there. He showed us a slide presentation about his plans. He showed us the top causes of death in the U.S. and in Africa and other developing countries. In the U.S. the top causes are things like heart problems, strokes, cancer, and other non-communicable diseases. Whereas the top causes of death in developing countries are more the communicable diseases such as infections, childbirth, and malnutrition. The top three specific ones in West Africa are Malaria, respiratory diseases and diarrheal diseases. The World Health Organization is predicting that over the next decade there will be a big transition from non-communicable to communicable diseases being the leading causes of death in many of the developing countries. With this transition there comes a need for new ways of addressing health issues in these developing countries. This is why the focus of this trip in Senegal will be focused on screenings for diabetes. They will be doing free health screenings focusing on blood pressure and blood sugar. They usually have a good turnout at these events and hope this time they will as well. Another part of the trip will be to set up a medical store to help those people who will have a need for help with their health. They hope that this store will become a sustainable permanent part of the community, operated by natives of the community. Zach will also be able to do rotations at a local hospital to observe their work there. The trip is also designed for the students to return during their fourth year of medical school to do more volunteer work. He will also be able to work with a local pediatrician to research oral rehydration therapies for kids suffering from diarrheal diseases. Zach will be paying for this trip out of his own pocket and we wish him great success in his education and with this trip and he will be taking one of our club banners with him to a local club there. We look forward to having him return and do a presentation when he gets back from this great trip.
Announcements:
President Bill let us know that 2017 will be our club’s 100th anniversary and we would like to start planning what we will be doing to celebrate that anniversary. We need a volunteer to head up the committee to plan those activities so please consider volunteering and let Bill know. Our District Conference will be June 18th – 20th in Fort Collins so mark that on your calendar. Casper Rotary Foundation Board meeting will be tonight at 5:00 at the Methodist Church downtown.
Program:
John Starnes introduced our program today; we started off with a short presentation from Rotaract President Debbie Mueller and Christine Vencill from our local Casper Rotaract Club. We will be privileged to hear from them again on April 13th for a full presentation on Rotaract. Debbie let us know that she will be talking to us about the New Generations project which is to help create continuity between the younger generations of Rotary in the Rotaract clubs and the Rotary clubs so that we can keep Rotary alive. She then turned the time over to Christine to tell us about the events happening tomorrow night on Saint Pat’s Day. Christine told us that there will be a “What is Rotaract” event at Ad Bay tomorrow evening from 5-6 to let young professionals know about what Rotaract is and what it is all about. They will be having green beer so please tell all of the young professionals you know about the event so that they can recruit more members. Christine also reminded us of the CASA’s Red Wagon event that Rotaract is helping with and said that they are still in need of a couple of volunteers to be valets that night of March 27th.
John Starnes then introduced our program speaker who was invited by Stan Lowe to share a part of a presentation that Stan had attended at another event. Our speaker is Retired Navy Captain Bill Winnie, who served on nuclear submarines as well as in the Pentagon. Bill gave us a great slide show presentation about the law of the sea and how the world waters in the Arctic are divided up for control by which countries. He showed us some slides of the ice cover in the Arctic and how with less ice covering the sea a larger sea route for travel and trade has opened up which will save about 30% of your trip time for sea trips going through there. It was interesting to see how the ice is receding and temperatures increasing along the coast. He told us that for the law of the sea the waters are divided into five categories;
1. Internal Waters,
2. Territorial Waters, which typically go out 24 miles from the coast,
3. Exclusive Economic Zone which typically go out 200 miles; in these waters the country does not have exclusive jurisdiction but is entitled to the economic benefit from them.
4. Archipelagical waters
5. Continental shelf zone which is when the continental shelf extends out past the 200 mile mark of the economic zone.
Because of the close proximity of the country borders in the arctic these categories are skewed which causes many issues which will have to be decided in a world court. Russia, a few years ago, went down with a small submarine and planted a Russian Flag at the bottom of the sea in order to try and lay claim to more of the Arctic Sea than they would normally be entitled too. They were trying to use the ridge of the continent to claim that they should have more because of the Continental Shelf Zone. The problem is that this ridge also is part of the other countries so it won’t work for Russia to claim waters that should also belong to other countries. So the other countries also are laying claim to the same waters for the same reason, so the law of unintended consequences kicks in and it will have to play out in an international court. Russia, during the Soviet Era was not properly developed and they now have Cities in places that do not make economic sense and they have a large area of land north of the Tran Siberian railway which is full of resources. They need to figure out a way to develop these resources and that is playing a big part in a lot of their decisions that they are making and things they are fighting for. For example, taking Crimea gave them a lot of water rights that will help develop those resources. The South China Sea has a lot of turmoil between the countries about water rights as well with China trying to claim some of the waters as territorial waters with their nine-dash line that they claim was from a map in 1947 that showed China had claimed those waters back then. Mr. Winnie feels that the reason for the interest in claiming those waters is for the resources that are there. Great presentation on a very interesting subject, thanks Stan Lowe for sending him our way.
President Bill DeGraeve adjourned the meeting at 1:30 with the ring of the bell, reminding us that next week we are meeting once again at the Parkway Plaza.
“Light Up Rotary”
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