Bulletins - 2007 - 07/11/2007

This Week's Bulletin Was Written By Jenny K. Goodman, Esq.

THIS WEEK’S MEETING

Mike Whitehurst rang the bell shortly after 7:30 a.m. and began his term as President this morning.  John Addams provided the invocation and talked to us about optimism.  Ken Juen lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.  As a special treat, Jimmy Lowe from the Senior Community Center provided piano back-up for our morning musical renditions of America the Beautiful and God Bless America.  President Whitehurst revealed this year's Rotary Theme as "Rotary Shares" and unfurled the new Rotary flag (which he assures us is not a rip-off of the Sharp logo!)

SGT. AT ARMS

Jonathon Stone began his reign of terror, er, fund-raising with the announcement that he can now accept credit cards for payment of auction items, donations, fines, etc.  Dave McKee, Lucy Killea and Lynn Hamilton all were fined for recent birthdays.  Dr. Paul Marsh celebrated his one year anniversary.  Maureen Erberle adopted two cute Yorkies and Dave Ferguson shared his daughter's success in obtaining a grant for the Balboa Elementary School.  Gary Green promised to pay $5.00 for every joke that Jane Barry gets up and tells at our meetings.  Go, Jane, Go.  President Mike also explained the difference between the Rotary Foundation and the club foundation.  The money generated from our Sgt. at Arms supports the club's foundation. 

GUESTS

We had several Club 33 Rotarians in attendance but otherwise not many visitors this morning.  Pete McGuire will continue in his valuable role of setting up and manning our entry table and announcing guests. 

COMMITTEE REPORTS

• Most of the committee chairs provided reports on their goals for this upcoming year and announced various important dates and events.
• ROTARY FOUNDATION: Carol Jensen stepped smoothly into her role as the Rotary Foundation chair.  The club exceeded its goal last year under Maureen Eberle's watch and Carol intends to continue with those efforts.  To date, our club has 123 Paul Harris Fellows with 73 current.  This is a great percentage for our club but can still be improved.  The club offers a matching grant program so you can become a Paul Harris Fellow for as little as $500.00. 
• MEMBERSHIP:  President Whitehurst announced that Sig has left the club for health reasons.  Please e-mail him if you would like to say hello from time to time as I am sure he would appreciate that.  Mike announced that the club is down to the "Dirty Dozen" of founding members and that it is likely that we will lose about 10 members each year so we need to bring 10 plus members in each year to continue growing.  Jeff Christie will be the membership chair this year but all of us are on the membership committee.  In fact, Jonathon fined everyone who did not bring a guest in the last year so start getting some interest going with your acquaintances to come to a future meeting.  Anyone interested in being involved in a new member mentoring program, please contact Jeff.   Dan Duncan was inducted as our first new member of the year.  Dan is very involved in the Downtown YMCA and immediately signed up to be a golf shirt sponsor for our upcoming golf tournament. 
• PROGRAM:  George Mullin takes over for Nancy Vaughan as the Program Chair.  George hopes to provide some interesting and topical speakers in the same tradition as Nancy did.  Next week's meeting will be off-site at the Museum of Man.  Anyone who has a speaker in mind should contact George. 
• STAND DOWN:  Joe Cioken and Gary Green talked about this upcoming event.  This coming week-end at San Diego High will be the annual Stand Down event helping homeless veterans.  Over 900 homeless vets are anticipated to attend. 
• INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE:  On August 5th, there is going to be a Padres game event.  Lynn Hamilton announced that John Moores had agreed to match the club's $2,000 donation which benefits the Responsibilty project in Tijuana.  Members who have signed up for this event are encouraged to submit checks to Don Lang as soon as possible so that Don does not have to bill you.