Taking Action in Our Community

by Don Jung

Sandesha Singh led the flag salute and said the thought of the day. President John Acker announced David Hadley was his guest today.

President John then had members give their thoughts and comments on the Palisades and Eaton fires. Debbie Goldberg’s son organized a group at Rock ‘n Brew to package 700 sandwiches for the fire fighters. Scott Yanosky offered help in Santa Monica for the fire victims, Ed Kushins is giving his guest house to a displaced person, Walt Kasha said his house in Glendale was saved. Other comments came from Nelson Gray, Barbara Matles, Dan Saks, Loli Ramezani, Patti Panucci and Tom Jeffry.

Bob Stephenson said our Rotary Foundation has up to $45,000 to partner with a few other Rotary groups to do a project for the fire disaster victims.

The mysterious Rotarian was Dave Boochever and he gave a joke for the day. Michele Cole leads the “Crutches4Africa” project and Ed Kushins is asking for crutches, walkers and other items, which he will collect for Michele. Joel Ruben mentioned the Rotary Reads program will be starting in February and will give out the signup sheets soon.

Mark Maruyama gave his craft talk. Born in Japan and raised in Northern California before going to UCLA. He mentioned his Uncle Paul Maruyama was instrumental in getting General MacArthur to allow over one million Japanese to leave Manchuria after World War II. He graduated from UCLA in 1988, where he met his wife, Stephanie, and got married in 1993. He started at IBM and then got involved in Fintech commerce where his firm, Netrix Global, provided technical support for Microsoft, Oracle and other companies. He was at the start of the dot.com era setting up online wizard formats to do investments and bank transfer transactions. He has two sons, Tyler (age 26) and Josh (age 24). He is now starting retirement and some part-time consulting. His wife is in the HR Department at KB Home, a Westwood real estate company.

Wade Austin won the wine, and Larry Johnson did not get the lucky marble in the raffle.

For more meeting photos, go to SmugMug.

SCHEDULE CHECK

Today's Program

January 27 - Col. Andrew Demanoski, Commander, Space Base Delta 3, Los Angeles Air Force Base

Upcoming Programs

February 3 - TK Pillan, new member Craft Talk, and Don Jung, Rotary Reflections
February 10 - MB Rotary Foundation
February 17 - No meeting, Presidents' Day

Club Activities - Save the Date

Ongoing, starting August 20 - Richstone Tutoring, 3:45-4:45, 113620 Cordary Avenue, Hawthorne, sign up here to help kids with reading and homework, every member is expected to volunteer at least once
January 25 - Rise Against Hunger, 9:30-11:30 assemble food packets, 11:30-12:30 clean up, Kinecta Ops Campus, 2100 Park Place, El Segundo, sign up here.
January 27 - March 7 - Rotary Reads, Ted Iantuono will send out an email with details, sign up her e.
January 28 - Board meeting, 6 pm dinner, 6:30 meeting, Lido di Manhattan
February 17 - Book Club will discuss Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, 6:30, facilitator Ken Deemer
February 22 - Palm Springs hike - aerial tramway, hike and lunch. Let Vinny Fazzino know if you are interested.
March 28-30 - Trip to Casa Esperanza orphanage in Tijuana, see email from Vinny Fazzino for details
May 19-26 - International Rotary trip to volunteer with the Floating Doctors in Bocas Del Toro, Panama. See Deb Robertson's email and contact her if you are interested.