Be Polite; There are Kids Here

Good meeting, well attended.  We had a pretty full house for our annual speech contest today and the students didn't disappoint.  But hang on; we'll get to that in a minute.  Although PE Brett Schreiner was scheduled to be greeter, it was PP Chapman who stepped in to hand out badges in the PE's absence.  Nice job, big guy.

 

 

 The Pledge was duly led by Bob McBeeee at Prez Sean's behest and when he tried to pin songleading duties on Chapman, the big boy, undoubtedly suffering from extreme greeting fatigue, passed the duty on to Gary Spainhower who did his usual sterling job of getting us all off on key.

 

 

After the usual uncomfortable standing around moment while the Prez misquoted the Buddha, everyone sat down to begin noshing away on a fine Dave and Jan lunch of roast chicken, rice, salad and trimmings.  Very enjoyable.  As we sat down, we almost accidentally introduced the grandmother of one of our speech contestants and then PDG Clarence did manage to show off his friend Sharon Ewing whose presence lent a significant element of class to the whole enterprise...  Welcome, Sharon; we hope you'll come back to visit again, even if it's with Clarence.

 

 

With the speech contest looming, Prez Sean jumped right into running the meeting as if he was Donald Trump signing proclamations.  First up to the podium was PDG Clarence who, after a very nice lead-in, presented the 2016-17 Club Paul Harris Fellow to Club Secretary Tracy McLinn, and from this reporters perspective, it was very well deserved.  Congratulations, Tracy.   

 

 

Lastly before the speechifying began was the weekly drawing and Faith and Begorrah, 'twas Sharon Ewing whose ticket was pulled.  In deference to Ray Wyatt who was not in attendance, Sharon went for a white ball and succeeded.  Nicely done, Sharon; I assure you we were all disappointed at the outcome...

 

With those preliminaries out of the way, Prez Sean invited Neil Orchard to come up and introduce the rules for the Speech Contest and then Neil went on to introduce contestant #1.  The topic, as always, was an awkward one and difficult to wrap one's arms around: "Serving Mankind."  Each of the contestants did a fine job of distilling an amorphous topic into a meaningful presentation, each attacking it from a slightly different angle.  All four did a superb job in this reporter's opinion.  At the end, the prizes went to:

 

4th Place - Lin He (only one year in the U.S.!) - $50 award

3rd Place - Chris Capps (a senior looking for a degree in accounting) - $50 award

2nd Place - Johnny Garcia (a senior looking toward a career in business) - $100 award

1st Place - Yulia Khandrylea (the third senior in the competition who gave an emotional, fully memorized speech... outstanding) - $250 award

 

 

An event like this year's Speech Contest requires not just talented speakers, it takes a Rotarian to organize and shepherd the process along until the speakers are among us and ready to deliver their presentations and the kudos for this task go to Anthony Chacon who organized the effort from the get-go and produced as many qualified, eloquent speakers as we have seen in recent years.  Anthony, my thanks to you for the terrific job you did in putting this together.  Well done.

 

With that and apparently needing the money, Prez Sean invited Sergeant Ross Johnson to lighten everyone's wallets, a task to which Ross takes like a dung beetle to a herd of water buffalo.  Most of what transpired during the fining session has passed into the fog of history, but the one outstanding collection occurred when Brud Dufficy fessed up to his India trip and paid a fine of an estimated $1 per mile traveled.  Nice going, Brud and welcome home.  After a few thank you's, President Sean turned the membership loose on an unsuspecting public...  Very good meeting.