|
On this chilly Mid-May day, President Jack rang the bell promptly at 12:30 to begin this week’s meeting. Only in Michigan can we go from 85 degrees to 50 degrees in less than 24 hours and just shrug it off like nothing strange. If you don’t believe me you should have been in Florida with me in January when the same thing happened and the residents were in a genuine panic. Dick Ammons gave our invocation and the club sang “America the Beautiful”, accompanied by Dave Wendelberger. Dave Trumpie roamed the room delivering the microphone for Rotarians to introduce their guests. Debbie Mikula reported the state of the club’s health as good, including Bob Hoffman, who was in New York yesterday in his hotel room near where the Times Square tragedy occurred. Heidi McNaughton presented May birthdays. The question of the month was to name a song that describes you and why? Songs ranged from Slow Boat to China (truly took a slow boat to China), Any Madonna 80s song (not sure why), I’m a believer/don’t stop believing (from a true believer), Ain’t Misbehavin (the guilty always profess their innocence), Sing, Sing a Song (apparently this person does this at the office to everyone’s “delight”, keeping it positive), Love is a Battlefield (the trials and tribulations of a single person) and last but not least, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap (submitted by one of our attorney members). May birthdays club members raised $1,181 so far for the foundation. President Jack, handed out a red badge of membership to Scott Duimstra, the Executive Director of the Capital Area District Libraries. Scott grew up in West Michigan (hence the last name). I am sure we will hear more about Scott at a future date, welcome to Lansing Rotary. President Jack then announced that our club has two authors in our midst, Eugene Wagner who authored “Fighting the Death Penalty” (about, well the title covers it very well) and Ron Flinn “A Rendezvous with MSU” (a memoir of Ron’s 50 plus years managing MSU’s facilities and expansions). President Jack acknowledged Duane Vernon being honored as a Lansing Rotary Hero at our district dinner last week. The honor was given because of Duane’s 50 years of perfect attendance, ironically Duane was not at our meeting this week. Let’s hope the award didn’t go to his head and he has already planned to attend a makeup meeting elsewhere. President Jack announced next year’s hero nomination is Irv Nichols, more details will be forthcoming at a future meeting. The special music part of our meeting was skipped so we could get to this week’s program - special music. Ken Beachler as Chair of the Day introduced us to Kirk Domer, the Chair of the Department of Theatre at Michigan State University. Kirk in turn introduced us to Brad Willcuts, Assistant Professor – Musical Theatre and Choreography and the cast of Michigan State University’s Musical Theatre Touring Company. Today’s group consisted of Katelyn Hodge (from Clawson) Lukas Jacob (from Waterford), Melanie Vandenberg (Elk Rapids), Emma Callis (East Lansing), Taylor McPhail (Grand Ledge) and Maxwell Sanders from Royal Oak. The group will travel around the United States this summer and can be booked for alumni events or other occasions.  As the cast members performed numerous Broadway hits, I as Editarian tried my best to get every lyric they sang into this report, but failed miserably. So let’s just say the program was excellent and the talent on display was a joy to watch. So if you were like Duane Vernon and you were unable to attend today's program the show must go on and it did without you. Our meeting was adjourned until Friday, June 2nd as there will be no meeting next week due to the Memorial Day Holiday. |
