On Friday, March 3, the Palos Verdes Peninsula Rotary held a “Bring a Prospective Member to Lunch” event at the Palos Verdes Country Club. Almost a dozen friends, colleagues (most of whom worked for Wells Fargo) and a relative (brother of Marc Mazorow) were guests for a Mexican lunch (that offered a vegetarian option for those observing Lent),
and were serenaded by the membership, followed by a “By the Numbers” presentation of the James Webb Telescope project. In addition, the membership welcomed the visit of five Rotarians from other clubs.
President Allen Bond (who also works for Wells Fargo) welcomed the membership and guests. Jim Hartman led the invocation. Kjell Hellberg started the Pledge of Allegiance. Allan Colman sang our patriotic song. Julia Parton led the guest introductions as well as announced the February birthdays, wedding anniversaries and Rotary membership anniversaries.
Birthdays – Les Fishman, Liz Fitzgerald, Kjell Hellberg, and John Schurit.
Wedding Anniversaries – Christine and Richard Barnicki (49th); Allan and Robin Colman (44th); and Judy and Alex Maruszko (20th).
Rotary Anniversaries – Jack Goldberg (1); Henry Lee (1) and Jackie Ignon (22).
The raffle winners were Jim Hartman and Hang Up Moon.
President Bond announced the Club generosity in helping our community and announced the club has contributed $2,000 to the Botanic Gardens, $2,000 to mobile medical van, and $26,000 in scholarships.
President Bond and Rick Mendoza presented a Paul Harris pin and certificate to Brian Saunders.
In addition, A.J. Johnson received his Paul Harris plus one recognition.
We are a club with 100 percent of our members contributing to the Paul Harris Fund. The Fund works to eradicate polio and in 1986 there were 350,000 case of polio in the world. Today there are three.
Our District Governor Greg O’Brien and his wife Carolyn, recently traveled on a humanitarian trip with other Rotarians to Mexico. There they served and brought supplies to a teen after-school program, a pre-school, a diabetic clinic and a medical clinic. Next year’s trip is to Bogota, Columbia.
District Governor Greg O’Brien presented new member Mary Lou Schatan with her Rotary membership pin and certificate. Governor O’Brien shared with the membership that 35,000 Rotary clubs are in existence world-wide and that our club, founded in 1962, is an outstanding example of living the Rotary values of service to others, personal ethics, business and professional and community leadership and the source of enduring friendships.
Christine Barnicki introduce Mary Lou Schatan to the club and shared with us a little about our newest member. Mary Lou is an eyewear consultant and dispensing optician.
Her business, Schatan Optical Gallery, is located within Hillside Village, 24580 Hawthorne Boulevard, Torrance. She has been in business since 1988 selling fashionable eyewear and helping customers find their best look. She has a son and two grandchildren.
Our featured speaker was brought to our club by Marc Mazorow who introduced Scott Willoughby, the vice president and program manager for the James Webb Space Telescope, Northrop Grumman.
Willoughby is a resident of the Palos Verdes Peninsula with daughters who attend Peninsula High School. During how own years in high school he was the recipient of a Rotary scholarship. He was joined at the meeting by a Northrop Grumman public relations professional, Connie Reese.
Titled “By the Numbers,” Willoughby’s presentation was followed by many questions from the membership. More than 700 engineers, and 100 million hours of work, have contributed to the development of the James Webb Space Telescope which is expected to launch in October or November 2018. The satellite will travel one million miles in 29 days where it will send data from 13.5 billion years back in time. The “Big Bang” was 14 billion years ago. The information gathered by this telescope is expected to tell us if there of signs of life in outer space.
The telescope named for James Webb, who was an administrator at NASA in the years of when Kennedy and Johnson were U.S. Presidents, had a vision for a space program that not only “beat out the Russians” in space exploration but also had the distinct mission of scientific exploration.
