This week we were entertained by Eric Solash, a long-time Rotarian, with stories of his younger days which helped to explain why he is such a loyal Rotarian now. Eric told us that as a young man he attended the University of New Mexico where he majored in drinking and minored in partying. As a result of his failure to achieve much of substance there he decided to volunteer for the Navy. It would give him a chance to see the world and meet lots of admiring young women, or so he thought at the time. The Navy decided that he would make a good electronics technician, so that is the training he first received. Unfortunately, the locations he got sent to did not bring much chance to meet young women, so he volunteered (again) for a longer stint that would put him in Virginia (lots of beach babes there he thought) for computer training. Again, he was disappointed when he figured out two weeks in that this training was for service in nuclear submarines. Each tour of duty on a submarine was one hundred days long and usually involved spending sixty-two to seventy days underwater. Service on submarines is not considered mandatory and people who served had to volunteer for each tour (which he did multiple times, again).
Upon finishing his tour of duty with the Navy, he returned to University and this time he graduated. He then went to work for several different computer companies based in California as a service tech and trouble shooter for their various installations all over the country. Being single he was able to volunteer for some of the more far flung locations, one of which was Edmonton, where he was sent to fix the Public Library computer system. It was while there that he ‘fell in lust’, as Eric put it, with a good looking librarian, who he ended up falling in love with and marrying. Valerie was an audio visual tech at the time but later went on to become the manager of the downtown branch. His wife was friends with the manager of the Mill Woods branch (Linda Granholm) and when Linda mentioned that a group she volunteered for (ARCH) needed help setting up their computers, Eric again volunteered to help. It was thorough this that he became involved with Rotary, as Linda and her husband Hans were very involved with Strathcona Rotary.
Rotary brought him many more opportunities to volunteer his services to help others. Eric has been involved in the Belize Rotary Literature Project which supplied the curriculum for grades one to twelve for a school system in Belize. He built the two servers which held all of the information needed for the teachers in Belize. Eric has also helped to maintain and upgrade the computer systems at ARCH, a local group that helps adults with disabilities become gainfully employed in the community. A third group that Eric has volunteered for is SEESA where he introduces seniors to the world of computers and how to stay safe in it.
We would like to thank Eric for this brief insight into why he loves Rotary. As anyone can see, it is his love of volunteering and the people and adventures it brings with it that first attracted him and now keeps him in Rotary.