Rotary Club of Casper WY
Meeting Summary
10/26/2020
President Lisa Scroggins called the meeting to order promptly at 12:17, with the ring of the bell and welcomed everyone to today’s meeting.
Inspiration, Pledge, 4-Way Test:
Kyle Gamroth
Greeters:
Steve Loftin was our greeter today and he introduced the members who brought guests:
- Mike Stepp introduced Morryah McCurdy (Advance Casper);
- Hal Hutchinson introduced Nancy Boswell (First United Methodist);
Family of Rotary:
President Lisa let us know that Lori Klatt’s 84-year-old father was hospitalized with COVID, also her husband was diagnosed with stage 4 renal carcinoma and will be traveling to Cleveland for treatment. Please keep them in your thoughts and prayers.
Rotarians of the Week:
Bill Mortimer nominated Genna Jensen, who was just named Interim Director of the National Historic Trails Center Foundation;
President Lisa nominated PP John Griffith for always being willing to step up and help when and where needed.
The Interact Students were nominated for showing up to Food Bank of the Rockies Saturday and setting a new record for boxes filled on a Saturday.
President Lisa nominated Richard Schwahn congratulating him on his new East Side location for his Altitude Vet Center.
President Lisa Also nominated Tassma Powers for participating in the Dancing With The Stars of Casper this weekend.
Announcements:
President Lisa let us know that with the increase in COVID cases the board will be meeting regarding the possibility of halting face to face meetings again, they will let us know via email.
Richard Schwahn thanked those who helped with the outbound exchange interviews, Denise Prugh, His wife and also Brian McCash from five trails. He said that they are tentatively preparing for exchange next year and have two good candidates. We will be needing host families next year so keep that in mind and talk to anyone who may be interested in hosting.
President Lisa added that the Club is in need of a YEO, Youth Exchange Officer, she has some people in mind but if you are interested in serving please contact Lisa as there is training involved in order to serve.
Steve Loftin announced that we will be filling boxes at the Food Bank of the Rockies next Monday and will need volunteers.
Special Presentation:
Program (Interact):
Today our speakers are from the Casper Interact Club, Emma Nicolaysen, President Kenzie Martinie, and PP Brooklyn Wistisen. First, we had PP Brooklyn speak to us. She spoke about service above self and what that means to her and the Interact members. Interact started in 2018 and she has been a member since the beginning. Service above self is the Interact Club’s Motto and these three words are very important to her, and each member, as it reminds them that they come second, or in other words they need to place service to others above their own self-interest. Albert Einstein once said “only a life lived in service to others is worth living”. Interact members each month go out into the community to serve others, they do things like helping at the food bank, cleaning Rotary Park, and serving anywhere they can. The first International project they did was with a group called Me to We, where they sold bracelets to raise funds. One of their favorite community projects was helping out at the Senior Center with the big “Senior” Prom. She said many of the seniors had never participated in a prom due to the way that WWII affected the world and their HS. Another project they enjoy in December is to deliver cards to the people at Saint Anthony Manor and the patients and staff at WMC. These projects have given all of the members the enthusiasm to continue with even more service projects in the community and abroad. This January she will be leaving Interact and moving on to Rotaract where she will use the leadership skills and service above self, attitude to continue to grow in Rotary.
Emma then addressed us. They have been active in service projects at Mimi’s House, Make A Wish Wyoming, Seton House, and Casper Senior Center, they like to stay active in serving the community. One of their most recent events was helping the Casper Rotary Clubs with the Buck Off Polio Run to raise funds for the End Polio Now campaign. They have been involved in many service projects, very impressive list of things they do for our community. In 2019 they began working with the group Me to We and they sold bracelets that were made by women in Kenya who are trying to earn money to send their daughters to school, they raised over $400 to help pay for those girls’ school supplies and school costs.
Kenzie then took over. She is the President of the Interact Club and also the Chair of the new Casper Youth Council that has just been organized. Their new International project is a partnership with Shelter Box to help supply needy families around the world with Shelter Boxes. They supply boxes to families that have lost their homes due to natural disasters or conflicts in their countries. They customize the box according to the situation. They are very excited about this project, they are working with Mike Howe, who is the ambassador for Shelter Box. He introduced them to this project. The boxes contain a weatherproof tent, water purification, solar lights and many other things these people need to survive. They have the goal to reach at least $1,000 for this project. Tomorrow they are having a bake sale at KWHS to raise money for this project.
They then opened it up to questions. For fundraisers they will be organizing, they will post on their social media and they will also send out emails out to our club so that we can help or donate. They will also let us know about their meetings if anyone wants to attend. They will probably meet at the Chamber. They meet the second Sunday of each month and they post that on their Social Media also. They currently have 20 members and would like to get more so if you know any HS age kids let them know.
President Lisa Scroggins concluded the meeting at 12:54, she let us know that next week, we will be hopefully back at the Ramkota. The speakers will be from the Wyoming Symphony Orchestra, Rachel Bailey and Christopher Dragon speaking about the upcoming season.
“Rotary Opens Opportunities”
Rotary Club of Casper WY
Meeting Summary
10/19/2020
President Lisa Scroggins called the meeting to order promptly at 12:16, with the ring of the bell and welcomed everyone to today’s meeting. She stated that we were asked by the Ramkota to wear masks while we are not eating.
Inspiration, Pledge, 4-Way Test:
Susan Griffith
Greeters:
Mike Howe and Dan O’Dell were our greeters today and Mike introduced the members who brought guests:
- Vickery Hall introduced Mike Morrissey;
- Edis Allen introduced his children AmAni Allen, and Crue Allen;
- Elise Verbooman, our previous exchange student joined us via zoom, she is in Barcelona and working from home, doing well;
Family of Rotary:
PP John Griffith let us know that Kodi Merschat had a fall and tore her ACL over the weekend and is in surgery today. He also let us know that Kendra Ziler lost her mom this fall, so keep her in your thoughts and prayers.
President Lisa let us know that we lost long time friend and Rotarian Dick Shamley this past week.
President Lisa also let us know that she spoke with Dennis Lower and he will be having surgery on his carpal tunnel soon.
Rotarians of the Week:
Charlie Shopp announced that this Friday they will be celebrating 100 years of Barnard real Estate being in business. It was started by the parents of our very own Bob Barnard’s parents back in 1920.
Dusty Johnson nominated everyone who helped with the food packing for Nicaragua, he named a few of them, Dick Wimbish and wife Val, Greg Brondos and his two guests, Miamie Sleep, Charlie Shopp and his wife Jamie, Denise Prugh and her office staff of six, Michele Wistisen, Steve Loftin, Dean Cline, Guy Dewitt, and Becky Byron. They packed 12,270 meals during that 45 minutes. The whole event packed 237,000 meals over the five-day period. Which is 36 tons of food for Nicaragua. He said that we should all be proud of what Rotary is doing for the people of Nicaragua.
PP John Griffith nominated President Lisa, Lori Klatt, and Mark Owens for spending their time on Saturday at the Ramkota figuring out how to make the Zoom stuff work.
Announcements:
President Lisa let us know that on the tables are plastic bracelets that say End Polio Now, so wear one and tell people about they can help end polio.
Special Presentation:
President Lisa Scroggins presented to us our new Board Member Edis Allen, he will be over the Rotary International Foundation as well as the Casper Rotary Foundation. Thank you for your service.
Program (Polio Plus):
President Elect Lori Klatt introduced our very first Zoom speaker today, Craig Needham, who is here to speak about his experience with his mother contracting Polio at the age of 29 and what she went through and accomplished while living in an iron lung for 13 years.
He presented a slide show about his mom; she was born in 1920 and died in 1962. While living in the iron lung she wrote a book about her life entitled Looking Up so entitled because of her lying in the iron lung she was always looking up at the mirror above her head in order to see around the room and see the people she was speaking to. He was in 7th grade when his mom wrote the book.
He gave us the chronology of her life:
Born in 1920, in 1942 met her husband who was a colonel in the air force serving in WWII. July 6th 1949 they were in Glenbrook Lake Tahoe, his mother was not feeling well so his Dad took her to Palo Alto to the house they were building and she insisted on trying to walk, in the book she said that those were the last steps she ever took in her life. She then went by ambulance to San Francisco to the hospital Polio Ward where they put her in the iron lung to help her breathe. Two months later she got out of quarantine, there were a lot of Polio patients whose nerves would regenerate and they were able to get out of the iron lung, however her nerves never did regenerate. In her book she describes how she had to accept that this would be her life from that point forward. She went back to the county she lived in because of the expense with taking care of an iron lung patient. Craig’s father left the family and the three children ended up in foster care as mom was still in the hospital in an iron lung. From her neck up she was fine but neck down all she could move was a little finger and a little toe. She had contracted Polio in the back of the brain which was the worst place to get it as it would never heal. She could still feel pain. In 1954 after about five years in the iron lung she decided that she needed to stop being a polio patient and start being a mom 100%. So, she moved into a house and got her children back after filing for divorce with the help of some very good lawyers. She then moved the children into a larger home, which is about six blocks from Craig’s current office. She spent the rest of her life at that house. She was a person of faith and held onto the Jesuit teachings.
Craig remembers the man who would work on her iron lung to keep it working properly, he also remembers the nurses that cared for her and helped care for the children. There were three nurses that came around the clock and were like second moms to them. The children had their chores that they were responsible for.
When the power went off in a storm, his sisters would have to manually pump the bellows to keep the iron lung operating while he would go start the generator in the garage. He couldn’t get it started but Fire Captain, a big Irish man came in and reached around Craig and started the generator. The next day the Firemen came and connected a new generator that would fire itself up immediately when the power went out so that they would not have to run the iron lung manually and not have to worry about it shutting down and losing their mom. He has always been close to the firemen.
They had pets that their mother loved. His mom taught him the facts of life and how to dance from the iron lung. Craig met his wife in 1961 and they have been married 52 years. Mom died October 2, 1962 during gallbladder surgery. Before going in to surgery she spoke with each of her children and told them that they should leave the world better than what they found it, he thinks about her every day of his life.
He read some lines from her book where she said that her children would receive a Polio vaccine, she also told her children that God would let her live for as long as they need her.
He showed us pictures of his mom, who some think resembles Hedy Lamar, the actress. As well as pictures of his sisters and their home.
He showed us pictures of the iron lung and described how it is a negative pressure machine that forces the lungs to inflate and deflate. He said that taking someone out of the iron lung is much easier than putting them in. When he was in grammar school he would run home at 3:00 to help them put his mom back in the iron lung after they had her out for her bath and such because he knew how hard it was to get her legs angled in.
There were polio wards all over the country filled with people in iron lungs, he showed us some slides of the wards. Liberace came to the Polio Ward to visit the patients and he took a picture with Craig by his mother’s side, holding onto the platform that held her head, he remembers always being worried that this platform would break and cause her head to fall breaking her neck, so he always held onto it when visiting her. Liberace played the piano for a couple of hours and visited with all of the patients. Craig saw Liberace a few years later and Liberace still remembered that day and came around and gave him a hug.
She wrote every word of her book while in the Iron Lung. The book sold well but all of the proceeds went back to the County for all of the costs of maintaining her in the iron lung. It sold for $3.99 when first published.
He said that it is hard to tell her story but at the same time he is lucky to have had her for his mother and for the love she had for her children, teaching them about life despite being in an iron lung.
He said that the first time he got called by a Rotary Club he knew nothing about Rotary and thought it was a cult. When he found out about what Rotary does and has done for Polio around the world he was hooked. In 1979 Rotary inoculated 6 million kids in the Philippines, in 1980 there were 120 countries with Polio, today there are two, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The things that Rotary does are amazing. But with Polio Plus Rotary has changed the face of the planet. In 1932 Rotary wrote their own law with the four-way test and Rotary and Rotarians live by that law. He thanked Rotary from the bottom of his heart for preventing millions of people from going through what his mom and family had to go through.
He said that the book is no longer in print, there are some on Amazon for a couple hundred dollars but he said that he is going to get the book published digitally so that it can be free to anyone who wants to read it. He will let us know when he has it done so that we can read it.
President Lisa Scroggins concluded the meeting at 1:03, she let us know that next week, we will be at the Hilton Garden Inn, just up the street from the Ramkota. PE Lori Klatt said that our program will be the Casper Interact Club sharing their activities and programs.
“Rotary Opens Opportunities”
