President Paul Urtz opened the meeting with three (3) rings of the bell to honor Triple Crown Winner American Pharoah, the first Triple Crown winner in 37 years.
PP Joe Hughes gave the invocation during which he honored both his father and his golf mentor, Arnold Palmer.
Smoky Hill was pleased to welcome Donald Tallman, Director of the Colorado Railroad Museum to be our speaker Monday. Donald is in his 10th year with the museum. He describes himself as the first "non-train enthusiast" to hold the position. Some highlights of his talk:
*The Museum is located in Golden, having been founded in 1958. At that time, many railroads, partuclarly the narrow gauge ones, were going out of business and much of the history associated with them was disappearing.
*From its modes beginnings, the museums npw has more than 100 cars, a 1/3 mile track, and turntable, roundhouse, and library full of original railroad documents.
*Through the library, the museum self publishes its own pamphlets and books. They recently did a cookbook and a small monograph on Colorado water tanks. The library has an extensive collections of vintage maps dating back to the 1880's.
*The museum does extensive restoration on cars, engines, etc. This is an expensive process since many parts have to be manufactured.
*The museum makes extensive use of volunteers. Last year, volunteers contributed more than 30,000 hours.
*The museum's special events include the Bunny Express at Easter, a Wild West Days (including, of course, a train robbery), the Dinosaur Train, and the Polar Express Train at Christmas.
It was a great pleasure to welcome back Editarian PP Darryl Harvey, who was accompanied today by his lovely wife, Donita. Darryl just got off oxygen yesterday and he is with us today-first time out. You can't keep a good Rotarian down! Darryl says it will be several weeks until his is back to normal. So--continue to keep him (and his family) in your thoughts and prayers. Welcome back, Darryl, you've been surely missed.
July 24- Zone Denver
October 3- Grants Qualification Red Rocks Community College
October 17- Rotary Leadership Institute Red Rocks Community College
November 14- Rotary Leadership Institute Red Rocks Community College
January 16- Grants Qualification Red Rocks Community College
February 6- Rotary Institute Red Rocks Community College
March 11-13- PETS Training Renaissance Hotel
April 2- Rotary Leadership Institute Red Rocks Community College
April 22-23- District Conference Breckinridge
May 14- District Training Assembly Front Range Community College
Mother's Day is this Sunday. If you haven't gotten a card and a gift, you may want to get on that. I have always viewed Mother's Day as a time to get together with all of those people in our lives who fulfill the mother's role. Our grandmothers, our mothers, the mother of our children, those of our chidren who are the mothers of our own grandchildren, and those other people in our lives who filled that role unofficially by being a mentor or friend. This year, however, I am reminded about how many of those people are no longer around to spend time with. Many of us here in Smoky Hill Rotary have lost our mothers in the last few years. My mother and Donita's mother both died within the last 2 years, our fathers a few years before. It leaves a void that is hard to express. I remember in the early stages of the adjustment to the loss, having something happen and thinking, "I need to tell mom about that" before remembering that was no longer possible, and a deep, renewed sense of loss would come over me. Those moments don't happen much anymore. Someone once wrote that he interviewed his grandmother for part of a research paper he was working on for a Psychology class. When he asked her to define success in her own words, she said, "Success is when you look back at your life and the memories make you smile." By that standard, my mother and mother-in-law both had successful lives. Remembering them on Mother's Day will make me smile a lot.
Last week's question: Who are the only two actors to direct a film in which they also won the Oscar for Best Actor? Answer -Roberto Benigni in Life Is Beautiful, and Laurence Olivier in Hamlet.
This week's question: On Monday, PP Terry Remigio asked if anyone knew who David Lloyd George was. Not a lot of people seemed to know, so this week's question is about him. Lloyd George was British Prime Minister during the last half of WWI and then the immedited post-war period. He represented Britain at the peace talks. Unlike the French and Italian leaders, Lloyd George on the whole stood on the side of generosity and moderation. He did not want to utterly destroy the German economy and political system—as the French demanded—with massive reparations. A world famous economist attacked Lloyd George's stance on reparations in his book The Economic Consequences of the Peace, calling the Prime Minister a "half-human visitor to our age from the hag-ridden magic and enchanted woods of Celtic antiquity". Who was that economist? Answer next week.
