Highlights from Rotary Meetings for the Week of July 27, 2015, Scholarship Winners Provide Updates

 
President Bruce Rutherford opened the meeting at 6:10 PM. Our guests were scholarship winners from previous years including Courtney Clothier, Dan Rogus, and Naiya Patel.
 
The following announcements were made:
  • Next Wednesday’s meeting (August 5th) is new member induction night, be sure to attend to welcome our new members.
  • We will also hold our Board Meeting at 7 PM next week August 5th.
  • Max Rose was at Camp Discovery for disadvantaged children Tuesday and will be there again Thursday evening.  There are 36 campers and 36 counselors; each camper is accompanied throughout the week by a counselor. The camp is held at the Deer Park Camp. We support the camp through an annual $3,000 grant. Max enjoyed dinner with the campers and revived some old friendships and saw some extraordinary interaction between the campers and the counselors.  Max invited anyone interested to join him and Gail Linenberg on Thursday for Water Ice Night (Thursday is also talent show night) and see the good that comes from our community grant funds.
  • John Ortolf announced “Turn the Towns Teal” program is Saturday August 29, 2015, Volunteers will meet at 9:30 am at Starbucks in Doylestown Borough. The club is sponsoring the event with a $250 grant to purchase supplies. Club volunteers will join other Doylestown volunteers by tying teal ribbons around the town to promote awareness of Ovarian Cancer, the silent killer. We are using an online program for volunteers sign up for this event.
  • Bruce reminded us that the District is hosting the Phillies vs. Dodgers Strike Out Hunger Baseball Game at Citizens Bank Park on Wednesday, August 5th.  $9 from each ticket goes to the Rotary Foundation; contact Bruce if you would like to purchase tickets to the game. Rich Newman is attending the game and would love other members of the club to join him.
  • The Summer Picnic is scheduled for Wednesday August 26 at the Doylestown Country Club. The theme is recommended to be Hawaiian, but is still to be determined. 
Bill Angell introduced our three returning scholarship winners joining us for dinner:

Dan Rogus, from CB East is a rising sophomore at Bucknell University; he will be going back in one week.  His freshman year was rougher than expected but he enjoyed it. Dan participated in BuckWild, a dynamic outdoor pre-orientation program before school started and enjoyed meeting other freshmen. His first semester he underestimated how much work he needed to do outside the classroom and hid grades were not as high as expected.  Dan did a lot better the second semester. This summer he  a leader for BuckWild. Dan joined the new Rotaract club at Bucknell and found it very rewarding. Their community activities included the Change for Change drive that raised over $1,000 to help eradicate Polio. They also collected 192 toys for the holiday toy drive and coordinated concerts for local retirement home residents by local acapella groups.

​Naiya Patel was President of the Interact club at CB East. She is a rising junior at Lehigh University majoring in Finance and Economics. Her sophomore year GPA was 3.6 after a rough freshman year; her sophomore year seemed a lot easier. She is Secretary of her service Sorority which raises money for Breast Cancer awareness, they raised over $4,000. She still volunteers locally at A Woman’s Place. She is coordinating a 5k run to raise money in October. She writes for three different web magazines in her free time. She has enjoyed her past 5 years of involvement with Rotary through Interact and her scholarship.

Courtney Clothier, a 2012 scholarship winner is entering her senior year at at Temple University. Her Junior year was the most challenging and rewarding. She was able to get on the Dean’s List while participating in two community service organizations. She volunteers in the Jump Start program and supports a group of 7 girls in the local school system. In Jump Start, college students go into Philadelphia classroom and help out. She started a Jump Start assessment program so they candetermine how the program has helped students who participate.  She is also Secretary for her International Honor Society sorority, looking to build the chapter. She is a member of the Temple University Community Service Association, one of their main programs is the Silver Lining fundraising program with the proceeds going to Temple University Cancer Research.

Bruce Rutherford closed out the meeting with a multimedia presentation on his father’s classification speech.  Milt Rutherford never gave a classification speech in all his years in Rotary so Bruce showed us an interview of his father recorded by the Doylestown Historical Society. You can borrow (or better yet, BUY) the CD from Bruce to see this exceptional presentation.