President John Starnes called the meeting to order promptly at 12:24, with the ring of the bell and welcomed everyone to today’s meeting, with a special welcome to Greg Brondos.

 

 

Victoria Ziton and Fred Feth were the greeters today, and Fred introduced the members who brought guests:

First, our exchange student Elise;

 

Dennis Lower cracked us up with a couple of good jokes, and then Gary Pehrson had us all stand and lead us in singing “America the Beautiful”

 

Dan White introduced himself to the club today. He works as a Sports Medicine Surgeon at Casper Orthopedics. He thanked Dennis Jack for being his sponsor to the club. Dan grew up in Rocky Ford CO, the son of two school teachers and his dad was also the Wrestling Coach. He grew up being the hired hand to whatever ranch in the area needed help at any given time, thus his love for Wyoming and the West. As a young man he got to know the local town Doctor and spent a lot of time fly-fishing with him. The Doctor was a military Doctor from WWII and would not usually speak about the military unless it was while they were fly-fishing. Because of his stories Dan decided that he wanted to become a military Doctor. He was a wrestler in High School and went into the military out of school and studied Orthopedics and went to Fort Bragg NC as a military Dr. After 3 years he did his Orthopedic residency and then went back to Fort Bragg and jumped out of airplanes for a while longer, then he ended up going to Iraq as an orthopedic surgeon for 14 months. After that he went to surgical research to find better ways to help injured military personnel. He took care of the athletes at West Point for a while then spent some time at other hospitals and learned more about Orthopedics. One of his buddies kept telling him that he needed to check out Casper and he kept looking around at other places but finally after coming to Casper several times Casper grew on them and so they decided to move here and they love it.

 

Mary Koernig received her Blue badge today, Congratulations!!

 

Eric Easton introduced the students of the month today; we had two great young students from NCHS. Kevin Thompson and Sara Martinez; it is always a treat to hear from the great young students from our District.

 

 

Ed Huckfeldt, former club member that started the annual pheasant hunt many years ago passed away last month at the age of 80.

John Starnes let us know that Bill DeGraeve’s father is recovering.

Richard Schwahn said that his daughter played at Carnegie Hall with the NCHS band and it was great.

Dick Jay said that Tucker Laprade’s son Henry was in a play this past weekend and did a great job.

Mike Ward said that there were a list of High School Seniors being honored in the newspaper this past week and many of them are related to Rotarians, he had those with family members on the list stand up and we indeed had a great representation from Rotary.

Dennis Lower let us know that his Granddaughter Lily entered an essay competition and of 600 entrants she got number one in the State of Wyoming for her essay about her brother’s suicide. Also last week she had a couple of entries at the art competition and one of the pieces she made is now being displayed at the Governor’s mansion in Cheyenne.

Greg Brondos announced that he and his wife celebrated their 50^th wedding anniversary.

 

Mike Ward nominated Dennis Lower as he has been in our club for 50 years this year.

Bob Tarantola nominated Senator John Barasso and Brad Diller for their work with the youth Congressional Awards and also Susie McMurry for her Granddaughter participating in those awards. He also nominated Nicole Tholson for the Meals on Wheels Foundation fund raiser this past weekend.

Gilda Lara nominated the representatives of Sinclair Refinery and Hilltop National Bank who are members of our club. Sinclair was named the Chamber’s Most Prestigious and Hilltop was named the large member of the year for the Chamber.

Liz Becher nominated Gilda Lara for the great job she did with the Chamber Dinner and the video that she put together highlighting Casper, she also nominated all of the Rotarians who were in the video.

Deb Theriaut read us an email from our 1997 exchange student from Argentina, and reminded us that we have two exchange students coming this year and are still in need of three more host families.

 

 

Jim Ruble introduced our speaker today, fellow Rotarian from Lander, Shelli Johnson. She is an adventure guide, life coach and keynote speaker who shares her presentation of “Epic Lessons Learned in the Field” with leaders around the country and is here to share a part of it with us. She moved to Wyoming at the age of three and just loves what Wyoming has to offer. She showed us some great pictures of some of her adventures outside in Wyoming. In 2008 she reinvented herself into a life and leadership coach among other things and started her current company yourepiclife.com and does leadership coaching and facilitation and keynote speaking as well as taking leaders on outdoor adventures to help them to learn some of the lessons she has learned while out in wild.  She said that she is on a mission to get people to imagine their best life and live it and to not squander it away. She likes using the wilderness as a way to teach because the wilderness is unpredictable just like life and you can’t hide out there you have to actually deal with whatever is thrown at you. She has gleaned over 20 lessons that she uses in her coaching and keynote addresses. Today she shared two of those lessons with us starting with “Know your location and know your true north” while in Alaska’s Brook range on an adventure with NOLS she learned this lesson. They had ben hiking and were not quite sure where they were or where they should be so they stopped to look at the topographical maps and try to see where they were. As they were working for over an hour some of them, including her, were getting impatient and one of the hikers from France turned to her and said “With all due respect, I do not feel that it is a waste of time to figure out where we are so that we can figure out where we are going.” She has always remembered that and incorporated that into this lesson learned. She feels that this lesson is true in all aspects of life; we need to know ourselves and know where we are. She said that solitude is the key to self-realization; we need to make time for ourselves to listen to your thoughts and hear what is needed to get you where you want to be. It is hard for people to stop and not do anything, to listen to yourself. She said that the two main questions people hire her to help them with is “who are you,” and “who do you want to be.” These are critical for being able to live your epic life. She gives her clients a mental map of where they want to go and so when they have to make a decision they will check that map and ask themselves, “If I say yes to this will it keep me on course to where I want to be?” The second lesson she shared with us was “Dare to fail.” She said that people don’t do things because they are afraid of failure. So she has asked what failure is, and people say, things like disappointing others or the main one is looking bad to others. It is sad that we don’t try things simply because we are afraid to look bad, to fail. Todd Skinner once said “We cannot lower the mountain so therefore we must elevate ourselves.” She told us to think about our “failures” and think about the good that came of that failure because if you can’t find the good that came from it you are not looking hard enough. The way we grow is to dare to fail. When you reach a peak and have a success it is because you did dare to fail so success can’t come without daring to fail. Please check out her website at www.yourepiclife.com for her contact information and more about what she offers.

 

President John Starnes concluded the meeting at 1:22 with the ring of the bell and reminded us that next week we will be back at the Parkway Plaza. Our speaker will be Dr. Eric Linford who will speak to us about Foot and ankle disorders and treatment options.