Written by Patrick Hart

 

Elliot Pinsel led us in his last meeting as president this week, and in what was probably an appropriate ditty for the end of a reign, Dennis Kratohwil led us all in singing “Amen.”

 

This week we were joined for breakfast by our former district governor, Kevin Stevens and by Olivia Wilson.

 

Doug Fendon has become a grandfather for the second time, and he is liking it so much that he is thinking about trying it again.

 

Howard Jaffe is celebrating his 70^th birthday, and despite how he might look now, he apparently was once young enough to be a child groom, because he is also celebrating his 48^th wedding anniversary.

 

Scott Hezner bragged that he visited Escanaba Michigan, which is a great beach town and has a Rotary Cub that has been around since before any of us were born.

 

Rich Schoeneman announce that he had completed 43 years of marital bliss.

 

Tom Zengeler has a bunch of high powered experts on something or other coming all the way from Japan to study his highly successful business.

 

Elliot Pinsel bragged about how much he enjoyed being president of the Libertyville Sunrise Rotary Club.

 

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Diana Servos, Dave Potts, Howard Jaffe and Tucker Olson are all having birthdays, while John Blair and Greg Hill are celebrating their anniversaries as Rotarians.

 

Howard Jaffe once again reminded us of the opportunity to contribute to the Rotary Foundation before June 30.

 

Patricia Bleck reminded us of our two upcoming community service events, which you can participate in.  This Saturday morning, June 24, we will be helping Libertyville Township place 10,000 plant plugs in the ground along Bull Creek.  Furthermore, on July 25 our club will be helping to build beds for the needy at Saint Joseph Church in Libertyville.

 

Tom Miller is looking for additional volunteers to help run Bid Pal at next year’s fundraiser.  Bid Pal has revised their system, and they have a training session on Zoom coming up shortly.  If you are available, please contact Tom Miller.

 

In lieu of next week’s morning meeting we will be holding our installation dinner on Wednesday June 28 at Tom Zengeler's house at 29097 Gossell Road Wauconda, IL, 60084.  The festivities will commence at 5:00 pm. 

 

For our Fun & Frolics Doug Fendon showed us a series of pictures, such as four Volkswagens parked along Abbey Road and asked us to identify what they meant

 

Our speaker this week was Matt Primack, President of Advocate Condell. Advocate Condell is a 300 bed hospital located in Liberty Illinois.  Many of us remember when Condell was a much smaller facility that operated as a local hospital, but as our speaker points out there has been a great deal of consolidation of hospitals in recent decades into large chains, which allow the institutions to reduce some administrative costs.  Condell thus became Advocate Condell, and it is now part of the fourth largest non-profit health organization in the country. 

 

Dr. Primack says that Lake County has incredible health care.  We have six hospitals including the one he operates, and we have five hundred ambulatory health centers. 

 

Condell is the only trauma 1 center in Lake County, which requires the hospital to maintain twenty-four hour coverage in specialties that treat trauma related injuries.  It also maintains a 17 bed intensive care unit and is currently engaged in a $55.000.000.00 expansion process to take this up to 34 beds.

 

 

Dr. Primack mentions that one of the changes that has occurred in the hospital industry is the growing number of violent incidents they have to deal with.  He says that gun shot wounds have grown dramatically in recent years.

 

He also acknowledges that the emergency room at Advocate Condell has had a difficult time trying to provide efficient service, and that the institution has done a lot of recent restructuring in their emergency facilities to try to overcome these problems.  This however is a wide spread problem among hospitals.  A big reason for this shortfall is that emergency facilities are legally required to treat everyone, and many people who do not have access to adequate health care in America are thus forced to go to emergency rooms.  In reality though such individuals are often coming for non-emergency matters, which it would be more appropriate for other treatment centers to handle, except that those other facilities have no legal obligation to accept everyone who needs their help

 

This week we had a whopping $37.00 in our weekly jackpot, while our progressive pot grew to $229.00 with 48 cards left.  Apparently the stakes are rising fast enough to entice the heavy rollers to come out of the woodwork.  Jeff Harger won the $37.00. while Tom Gore lost on his bid to take home the big money.  

 

"It's true hard work never killed anybody, but I figure, why take the chance." - Ronald Reagan