Meeting Recap Oct 8, 2020

 

Mike Sellers, Still President, Still Zooming

Bob Ricks, Always Your Humble Scribe

John Mlnarik: Zoomer for our Times

 

Zoomers Online count:   35 in total attended today’s meeting.

 

The Pledge:  Daniel Peck led the pledge and counted all who stood up. President Mike will talk to a few slackers at a later time.

 

The Greeting and Inspiration:  Bob Buchser (now known as Heath Hannich’s chief joke writer) welcomed us online before President Mike shuttled us into small chat rooms.

 

Bob later presented an inspiration on the importance of ONE VOTE. He gave us numerous examples of how one single vote had changed history time and time again. Example: One vote gave us the Bald Eagle as our nation’s symbol instead of the turkey. One Vote placed John Quincy Adams in the White House when the election was thrown to Congress. Andrew Johnson survived impeachment by ONE VOTE. Bottom line: VOTE!

 

Visitors:  Eddie Everett was once again online from Flemings Restaurant and Jenny Flores also joined us. We had no visiting Rotarians.

 

Tressa Williams has been celebrating her birthday all week and even had to leave early today for her office party. Kalamazoo’s finest, Ed Bouwhuis, was heading to Reno to celebrate his birthday all week long as well. Best wishes to two people who know how to party!

 

Club Secretary of State Dan Holder and Anna are still in Santa Barbara celebrating their 25th anniversary. Rumor has it that Dan was finally going to tell Anna he had been president of this club at one time. Stay tuned.

 

Warren Buffett’s left hand man, Don Skinner, was clueless on anyone in our club due to 24 hour counseling with Mr. Buffett…..or maybe he is working with Jimmy, not Warren Buffett. Mike Moul did chime in that Joanne was doing well after her knee surgery. We never could determine what kind of head injury DGIW Jan Eric had sustained that would require wearing a helmet as he did today. He requests no cards at this time. Skinner may follow-up. 

Blake Levins from Interact joined us again for a few updates on Interact. His team is motivated and will help us out on any projects if requested.

 

Steps for Success is October 31! Dan Winter has 10 volunteers for the day prior and 12 volunteers for the actual event. We need more than this to distribute 500+ pairs of shoes…….please contact Dan asap if you can help.

 

Rebuilding is only two weeks away. We are going to paint a house on Benton. You have already been guaranteed to witness PP Phil “Mumbles” Auger swing a paint brush at no charge…….PP Andy Ratermann slop paint on himself….and PP Walt Marwitz do the Vietnam double time to the sandwich truck. But you have to BE THERE! Videos will be allowed.  Please call PE Bill Kelly if you can join the team.

 

Parade of Champions: The virtual parade is October 10. If you receive this bulletin after that date, you missed it.

 

Nomination Committee: By now all members have received an email from Club Secretary and New Daddy Heath Hanich to select from a list the six past presidents that will serve on the nominating committee to select our next president for the 2022-23 Rotary Year. Please respond as directed to this email. This is important! We got the guy below one year:

 

Speaking of PP Joe Sweeney: Mark down October 20 for a live Happy Hour. Joe Sweeney found the going too tough to run for DG against DGIW Jan Eric Nordmo so he is vacating California and moving to Prescott, Arizona to try a new approach. His Prescott club has not seen this photo. President Mike is throwing a going away…...adios…..party for Joe and Linda Sweeney on October 20. Details to follow. Put this one on your calendar. Bring cash only and do not run a tab…...Joe likes tabs.

 

Our own Jimmy Fallon (aka Hugs Rowell) introduced our guest speaker. Wow! What a career for Lt. General Susan Helms, US Air Force.  She and Denise Sellers graduated from high school together in Portland, Oregon and Denise asked her to speak to our club.

 

Susan went from high school to joining the first class of females admitted to the Air Force Academy in Colorado in 1976. She graduated in 1980 as an aerospace engineer and her military career began.

 

She applied to NASA in 1989 and was selected to a team of only 23 finalists to be part of Group 13 astronauts. Group 1 had included the Mercury astronauts. Susan detailed the enormous training it took to allow her to spend 211 days in space on five different missions and four different space shuttles. One of these missions included six months on the space station and an 8 hour walk in space.

 

On her first mission GW Bush was president of the US when she launched. By the time she returned to earth Bill Clinton was president. She was able to meet President Clinton in the Oval Office to discuss her findings from the mission.

 

One interesting tidbit was how it felt to return to earth after spending six months on a space station with no gravity. Susan remarked that upon touching ground in Florida her arms felt heavy as did her feet. It was hard to walk off the ship but she and her two fellow astronauts knew they had to look healthy as the cameras would be rolling. She was unable to drive a car for 8 days until her reflexes returned to normal.

 

All the online Zoomers today were treated to a great presentation by an American hero. Thank you, Susan!

 

See you next week……..