Rotary Club of Scituate
Meeting Minutes: February 26, 2014 held at The Mill Wharf Restaurant
Scituate Harbor, Scituate, Massachusetts
In attendance: Jack, JD, Dietrich, Bernie, Beatrice, Mike, Joan, Joe, Sandi, Sue & Walter, Lucille, William, Candace, Janet & Bart, Mimi and Lisa.
Our guests included Karen Hansen, David Tompson and Beverly Westerveld, as well as our special speaker, Nicholas Lappen and his friend, Jake Murray. In addition, we were delighted to welcome four members of the Weymouth Rotary Club: Stephen Certa, Helen Blowers, Lois Dnkaran and Steve Gilman. Finally, Ruth Frye from Project Reach in Marshfield was also in attendance.
President Jack Stebe opened the meeting at 6:30 p.m. with JD Miller leading the Pledge of Allegiance. Jack gave the invocation thanking everyone for the wonderful Council on Aging dinner in Marshfield held the previous Saturday, February 22.
Lucille spoke about the upcoming concert on Friday, April 4 at Scituate Country Club with musical savant, Tony Deblois.
Jack then introduced Ruth Frye who accepted another of our donations from the Christmas “Giving Tree” fundraiser. Ruth explained that Project Reach helps to coordinate students from Marshfield High School who volunteer to tutor Marshfield elementary school children one on one; they also help the younger students with their homework after school.
After a delightful dinner filled with friendship and conversation, Jack introduced Nick Lappen, who spent the remaining time describing his amazing journey to Mongolia last summer, called “The Mongol Rally Experience: Service Fundraising Through Adventure”.
Nick is a Scituate resident and recent college graduate, and he is JD’s stepson! Nick had studied abroad in England and learned about a group called “The Adventurists,” which wanted to organize teams for the rally to Mongolia for the challenge, but also to raise money for various charities. Nick decided to join a team to help raise money for the charities “Safe Passage” and “Cool Earth”. Safe Passage provides support for children living in the Guatemala City Dump, while Cool Earth works in the Amazon Rain Forest setting up trusts for local communities. The Weymouth Rotary Club helped to fund him for his efforts. In addition, member Mike Johnson put Nick in touch with Bridget Cummings who is a member of the Mongolian Rotary Club; Nick would meet her when he reached his destination: the capital of Mongolia, Ulan Bator.
In order to obtain further funding for his participation in the rally, Nick contacted 300 local businesses along the East Coast and received $1,000 from a bow tie company along with 50 bow ties to distribute and wear along the way!
Nick and his team arrived at the starting line in Hastings, England along with 300 other teams and soon discovered that they were underprepared. Within 15 miles of the start, their car broke down, which delayed them ten days. By the time they made it to the European continent, the winning team was already in Mongolia! However, that did not deter them and they motored on encountering many wonderful adventures and challenging set-backs along the way including playing basketball and soccer with local kids in Turkey, enjoying local cuisine in Istanbul, living through crazy driving in Georgia, dealing with a Russian border patrol in Chechnya, having another amazing meal in Chechnya, being awed by the landscapes of Kazakhstan, paying bribes to get through Russia, meeting up with five other teams on the Russian-Mongolian border and ditching their car and taking a bus to Ulan Bator. When the bus broke down, they managed to find another car that needed to be delivered to the capital.
Nick also dared to drink fermented horse milk, and at last accompanied his team into Ulan Bator in time for a party at the British Embassy, where they had the honor of being “the first team in the history of the race to finish with more cars than they started with!”
After the rally was completed, Rotarian Bridget Cummings hosted Nick to even more adventures including a visit to Hong Kong. He also stayed with his stepsister in Bangkok and finally flew home in mid-October. For his next adventure, Nick would like to volunteer at Safe Passage in Guatemala.
JD stood up to thank Nick, as well as the Weymouth Rotary Club for its support of his efforts. In addition, he congratulated the club on a job well done at the Community Dinner in Marshfield the previous Saturday – especially Joe & Karen Kelley and Walter & Sue Heller for all their efforts in preparing and organizing the meal.
Jack thanked all our guests and adjourned the meeting at 8:35 p.m.
Please note that there is no meeting next week due to Ash Wednesday.
Respectfully submitted,
Lisa Tompson
Acting Secretary
