Augie Annicchiarico Classification Update
Posted by Vi Hughes on Aug 24, 2016
This past Tuesday we were treated to an updated classification talk by one of our long time members, Augie Annicchiarico.
Augie first joined Rotary in 1990 and has the classification of Chartered Accounting. He has served on our club executive several times over the years.
Augie was born in Campagna, Italy, the second of five children, and came to Canada at the age of nine. They settled in Edmonton. He spoke of how he was able to catch up quickly with his English speaking, same age school mates in Canada, by becoming part of an accelerated grade program in Elementary School in Edmonton. He said that their home was multi-lingual as his parents spoke Italian to the children, and the children spoke English to their parents. In the process, many words were invented, as the two vocabularies did not mesh completely. He attended St Alphonsus Elementary Junior High and St Joseph High School. He then went on to attend the U of A where he studied Commerce, specialising in Accounting.
While there he decided to take a course in Italian as he did not speak, read or write Italian very well. As part of this, he joined the Italian club, where he met his future wife Jaqueline. Once he graduated he joined a large accounting firm specialising in banking, and he obtained his Chartered Accountant certification soon afterwards. He worked for them for about ten years, and then in 1977, decided to take on a partner and go into business on his own. This choice has worked out well for him, and his firm now has over thirty employees.
Along the way he has served on the executive and helped to raise money for many different charitable causes. The first on being the earthquake in Italy in 1982, for which they raised over four hundred thousand dollars, which they donated to the Red Cross. It was such a large number of donations that the Red Cross needed help with generating receipts, so Augie took a team from his firm over to help out. As a result of this he ended up being asked to sit in their Board, which he did for several years. He also helped to raise large amount of funds for his church to build a new recreation center. He has also coached minor Soccer and also the soccer team at Concordia High School, and the boys team from this very small school of 150 kids (boys and girls), managed to win a silver medal in the final competition.
When he joined our Rotary group, he served as treasurer and helped to set up a proper financial reporting system for our club. He also loves to golf and has spent many years on the executive of his golf club and also with Alberta Golf. He continues to generously volunteer his time and expertise to various charitable causes.
As Dave Rayner so ably put it in his thank-you to Augie, these types of talks, from long time members, serve to illustrate things about us as people and Rotarians, that never come out any other way. When we put service above self, we truly embody the spirit of Rotarians.
