BULLETIN-August 12, 2026
By: Doug Fendon
President Taranowski opened the meeting and called on Marco Amidei to give the pledge. David Westlake then led us in prayer. Our new song meister picked out The Theme from A Summer Place for us all to sing. Percy Faith, the author, may have been a little disappointed in our knowledge of the lyrics as well as the melody.
GUESTS: Ms. Zoe Westlake was in attendance. She will only be here for one more meeting before she leaves for college. Mr. Marc Grote also attended. Marc was a guest of David Westlake.
BRAGS: Mr. Eliot Pinsel had a number of brags. He had a milestone birthday recently. He eldest son left the State’s Employment to start his own firm. Congratulations! His second son bought home a date/girlfriend for the first time to meet the Ms. and Mr. His third son is in law school now. This was a good month.
-Scott Hezner shared a special brag about fellow Rotarian Howard Jaffe’s accomplishment. He said Howard’s success in working with the Village of Libertyville on the Peace Pole—and navigating the challenges along the way—was like Odysseus returning home to Ithaca (Greece, not New York). Good job. The eight languages to be carved into the Pole are English, Spanish, Greek, Hindi, French, Potawatomi, Swahili, and Polish. Despite some vocal opposition, Klingon, Old Valyrian, and Pig Latin did not make the cut.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
We need beer pourers for the USO event at Mickie Finns on September 24. This is for the second shift. Please help if you can.
Pumpkin Fest is returning to Libertyville with Main Street. This is a change since the Junior Women’s Club did not organize it last year. Main Street and your club, LSR, will be the hosts this year. Look for more information. The date will be the last week of October.
October 24th: All local clubs will be setting up a Polio Walk. More information to follow. You will need your walking shoes for the event.
City of Hope will be having a Cancer Walk on Saturday, October 3rd. You are invited to walk and show your support. It will be in Zion, IL., starting at 8:00am. City of Hope has been our Premier Sponsor for our fundraisers for the past two years.
The Club missed passing the bucket for the Food Pantry last week, we can forgive our President for this faux pas, once. The bucket was passed around, and members generously gave $297 in cash to them. Thank you.
And is there anymore? Yes! It was announced to SAVE THE DATE of March 6th, 2027. The Libertyville Sunrise Rotary Club will be hosting The Second City Comedy Club at Libertyville High School. Please keep in mind, this is our only fundraiser and. We need every member to be involved to make this successful. More information and Surprises will be forthcoming.
FUN & FROLICS: A pre-selected few were picked at random for this week’s frolics. The topics chosen out of a large bucket were Baseball Trivia and US Minted Coinage. Somehow they are connected. Rich Schoeneman named the original 8 National League ball teams without hesitation. Then, Ron Lapins named the primary cities that US Coins have been minted. He also expanded to name the minor Mint Cities. He said he and Pam studied their old Encyclopedia Britannica at night and remembered these answers.
We then broke a precedent by calling on a guest, Zoe Westlake, to name the original 8 American League teams. She named seven and then Jon Robb jumped up to say the Milwaukee Brewers were the eighth team. He was right. They only were in Milwaukee for a year and then moved to St Louis and became the Browns. He also added a short history of that team’s migration and how the now Milwaukee Brewers came to North Wrigley.
Finally, Kim Smith answered what is the most valuable and rarest Abe Lincoln penny. She even knew who the designer of the coin was! By the way it is a 1909 S VDB penny.
Fun was had by all, as Fun and Frolics should be.
PROGRAM: Our Guest speaker today was Ms. Donna Bergl of “Big Great Lakes” Charity, a faith based 501 C 3. Their mission is to empower adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities by providing meaningful vocational training, life skills development, and creative enterprise opportunities after they age out of school services at 22 years old. Their web site is
www.biggreatlakes.org. They have a fundraiser going on right now. They have a donor who will match all donations totaling up to a sum of $500,000. If you can give a small donation, it will be matched.
RAFFLE:
Today’s raffle had a daily amount of $28.00. The ticket pulled was Marco Amidei’s. Even with all the prodding of the members, Marco took the cash. The next ticket selected was…Marco’s. He now had a chance of picking the Ace of Spades from a deck of fifty-three cards. He picked the King of Diamonds. ROLLOVER!
NEXT WEEK: GREETER & PRAYER will be Rich Schoeneman.
The person responsible for FUN & FROLICS is Ms. Kim Smith. I would study rare US coins for her game. She is good at it.
PROGRAM: Michelle Pyster of Jada’s Journey
QUOTE OF THE DAY: R Storo wrote, “Individually we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.”
The Object of Rotary was recited and the meeting adjourned. See you on the 19th.
