Our last meeting of February was a good meeting with Preident Keith Krings leading us in our usual meeting traditions starting with the pledge of allegiance. Phil Zepeda lead us in prayer, continuing with Matt Copeland leading us in the 4-way test, and Scott Nelson leading us in song. Our guests for the meeting were Laura Thomas from Concordia College, Past District Gov. Mike Rambus from the Farmington Rotary club, Judge John Hammond from the Lakeshore club, and our speaker for the meeting Phil Clintworth.
President Keith announced that Mike Caruso of the Troy club has been invited to serve as the District Governor elect for the 2016-2017 Rotary year. Congratulations to Mike!
Announcements started with Tammy Broderick (one of the managers of the lovely little yellow tickets) reminding us that the time is NOW to move the lovely tickets on to new addresses and people to help spread the possible monetary benefit of their presence. Tammy also reminded the club to get the lovely yellow stubs to her and the remittance to Lisa.
Lisa Hudy continued the announcements about the fundraiser with reminders to get the Auction Items to Brigitte Romero, and dinner reservations in ASAP. Sponsorships at the various levels are still available for the next 2 weeks. Lisa also reminded us to make sure to get invites or e-vites out to everyone who has attended in the past and to all possible future guests
Several people shared their happiness with the club starting with our guest Mike Rambus who was happy to have met our guest Laura and her husband at a raffle at his home club. He also was very happy to have won the 60% share of the raffle.
Rick Jarzembowski was happy to have won the 50/50 raffle and donated his proceeds back to the club. Thanks Rick!
John Copeland was very happy to see our guest Laura because she was a fellow co-worker at the U of M.
Don Broderick was happy to see his old friend and guest Mike Rambus.
Last but not least our Prez announced that his daughter Nicole Krings has been accepted at U of M.
District Governor Jim Gilmore recently announced a new partnership with Entegris Energy company. These arrangements were made with Raj from the Ann Arbor West club. Here is the deal: if you switch your natural gas provider to Entegris there are incentives for you and you can designate a donation to the club of your choice. Check with Prez. Keith for further details.
This year's District Conference will take place at the beautiful Mission Point Resort on Mackinac Island, May 16 - 18. Registration is now open! For information and registration please visit http://www.rotary6380conference.info/
After a nice introduction by Phil Zepeda, Phil Clintworth our guest speaker started his program with the dive signal from a submarine. (Remember the old war movies with the loud warning and the words Dive! Dive!) Phil is retired submarine captain with 29 + years of active duty with the Navy. He is past commanding officer at the Naval Base at San Diego.
While he was the C.O. at the Naval Yard he was able to be part of the making of the movie The Hunt for Red October. The movie was based on a novel by author Tom Clancy. Phil presented some interesting background on the author, actors, and departments of the Navy that were involved in making the movie. Along with the back ground information Phil also had slides that complemented the background information he had. Some points of interest were that before Tom Clancy became a well known author he was an insurance salesman. He typed the entire book out on a typewriter. The U.S. Naval Institute was the 1st publisher for the novel and it was also the 1st time that the Naval Institute had published fiction.
The movie TOP GUN was a factor in recruiting people for the Navy so the Navy decided to use this movie as a way to recruit for the submarine division. Technical advice, consulting and submarine familiarization was given by not only our presenter but by other officers as well. Phil had slides of several of the actors involved including Sean Connery, Alec Baldwin, and Fred Thompson. He also had pictures of the sets used by the director to aid in filming. In some of the underwater filming of the “dog fights” between subs Phil explained that in real life that subs don’t usually get any closer than a mile and that for them to get any closer was like driving white knuckled on ice. He went on to explain that there really was an incident during the cold war that author Tom Clancy had researched and based his story on. He concluded his program by telling us that only 2 submarines have been lost at sea since World War II.