Hal Hyde To The Rescue!

Posted by Jon Winston

Due to an ill-timed flat tire our scheduled speaker, Mark Huber, Executive Director of the SCC Symphony, was suddenly unavailable. Fortunately for us, Harold "Hal" A. Hyde, Watsonville Rotarian, who just happened to drop in for a visit, graciously agreed to fill in as speaker for the day. (I believe he described the experience as having been dragooned into speaking. :))

Mike Flynn Sr. provided the introduction. Hal is most recently Vice Chancellor Emeritus at UCSC. Among other significant accomplishments, he served as Brigadier General and Assistant Comptroller in the US Army, CFO of Ford's department store and he's a life-long Rotarian.

Hal has travelled the world extensively - imagine Rotary make-ups in 37 different countries! - and has participated personally in the Rotary Polio-Plus effort to eradicate Polio world-wide.

Seeing the light at the end of the polio tunnel, he's recognized that the next major push will be related to water and hygiene in developing countries. 1.2 billion people have no regular access to clean water leading to an estimated 32 million deaths annually - especially vulnerable are children under 5 years old.

Hal's first step in locally mobilizing for the global effort is to bring together Rotarians with UCSC researchers working on this very same problem. On January 13^th the story will continue as we'll meet UCSC ProfessorBrent Haddad, founder of the Center for Integrated Water Research, to hear about his studies of crucial fresh-water problems occurring locally, nationally and internationally.