Written by Patrick Hart
President Rich Schoeneman led this morning’s meeting, and we started off with a pledge and a prayer, but no song.
BRAGS:
Ron Lapin spent six weeks in Florida, which included many fun activities such as playing golf with Pat Schwartz.
Jon Robb’s son, Matthew finally got married after three postponements of the ceremony, two due to Covid and one due to his father’s heart attack. Apparently true love can overcome all obstacles.
Doug Fendon bragged about his brother in law, who got a hole in one after forty years of golfing.
Tom Zengeler recently attended his son’s graduation from Southern Illinois University and coincided his arrival in town to just miss the tornado.
Someone on Zoom made some incoherent mumblings about some football game that recently took place.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Polly Grover is having a birthday this week.
The Rotary Minute reminded us that there are opportunities for clubs to receive grants from the district for worthwhile projects.
We will have a fund-raiser committee meeting on Thursday, December 16 at 5:00 p.m. via Zoom.
Greg Hill is organizing a volunteer evening at the Northern Illinois Food Bank on January 19. Contact Greg if you would like to participate.
Final results are in for our Salvation Army bell ringing this year. We collected $947.78.
Glenn Garlick, the district’s veterans affairs liaison attended our meeting this week, and he presented pins to our two veterans John Blair and Tim Dempsey.
FUN & FROLICS:
Jeff Harger gave us some Chicago crime statistics this week. There are about 800 murders a year in Chicago and over 4,000 shootings.
PROGRAM:
Our weekly speaker was Bill Kmiecik, our governor elect, and he spoke to us about the Rotary Foundation. The Rotary Foundation is a charity which has spent approximately four billion dollars over the last one hundred years.
One of the biggest goals of the foundation of the elimination of polio worldwide, and we are just about there. Of course we have been saying we are just about there for at least the twenty-seven years that I have been in Rotary, and although we have made great strides in reducing polio we never seem to quite make the ultimate target. As Bill pointed out a big obstacle we face is a distrust of vaccines, especially in third world countries. For many years our speaker has had trouble believing that this was happening, when accepting the preventative measure could have eliminated a great deal of human suffering, but in the last year he has also watched many Americans resist efforts to vaccinated everyone against Covid.
Bill Gates is also a big supporter of the elimination of polio and he matches every contribution by a Rotarian to this campaign two to one.
The foundation also supports many other causes such as education, providing clean water in third world countries, and donating disaster relief when necessary.
A great deal of the foundation’s work is done through grants to individual Rotary Clubs, which support projects they have taken up on their own. There are district grants which can be made to a club for more local projects, and global grants which involve international benefits. The global grants are larger with a minimum size of $25,000.00, and because they are larger, global grants normally require several clubs to collaborate to take on the project.
WHEEL TIME:
Scott Hezner and Robert Zamor were both reprimanded for failing to sign in this morning, and both chose to pay $10.00 rather than to use their imaginations and do something more creative.
RAFFLE:
Our progressive raffle shot up again this Wednesday reaching $1,442.00 with only eight cards left, while the weekly drawing made it to $51.00. Jeff Harger went for the big bucks, but came up short, and being so interested in crime, he probably thought that he was robbed. Doug Fendon then won the weekly prize and showed great joy at his good fortune.
NEXT WEEK:
Greeter and Prayer: Scott Hezner
Fun and Frolics: Pat Hart
QUOTE FOR THE DAY:
“There’s enough on this planet for everyone’s needs but not for everyone’s greed.” Mohandas Gandhi
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