Bulletins - 2009 - 02/15/2009
This
Week's Bulletin Was Written
By Maureen Eberle
Joe Marshall shared a wonderful invocation to start our day off right. Tom Sayer led us in a pledge and once again our darling Irish man Jim Mulvaney, led us in a round of “When Irish Eyes are Smiling”.
Pete McGuire gave a warm welcome and introduction to several guests including a large entourage attending to see Herb Klein receive his Pathways to Peace Award.
 This being “World Understanding Month” Sandra Schrift, who served as the 2009 Peace Chair for the Downtown Breakfast Rotary Club and Dave Ferguson who nominated Herb Klein, honored Herb Klein by presenting him with the “Peacemaker of the Year " Pathways to Peace Award, in recognition of his career-long efforts to create pathways to peace. Herb Klein is a former press secretary for President Nixon, was honored for fostering peace and understanding in his roles as a senior leader in the White House, newspaperman, broadcast official, media consultant and civic leader on an international, national, state, regional and local level.
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Robin Bottomly once again encouraged us to donate $5 or buy toothbrushes, toothpaste, and floss for the Hospital Infantil de Las Californias Dental Project-a children’s hospital in Tijuana. She wants to deliver 100 packages to their Executive Director.
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Scott Carr updated us on a wonderful showing of our club to assist at the Airport USO. There were 17 Rotarians and their families that came to interact with troops on their way to Iraq. There were 380 men and women who came through the USO. A McCarthy Plaque was presented in appreciation for the fellowship to the troops. 
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Jeramy Larson, our wonderful Membership chair introduced for the last time, two new members, Barry Kohn and Melissa Trew. Barry is a CPA in Downtown and gave his top 10 list of what makes Barry unique which included being a heck of a nice guy and being humble. The second new member, Melissa Tru recently returned to San Diego last October to begin a new career as Executive Director of the Gaslamp Quarter Historical Foundation. We are excited to have both of these new members and welcome them to our club.
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Mike Whitehurst recognized Sandra Schrift who for her birthday made a donation to the Rotary Foundation to become a three time Paul Harris Fellow. Congratulations and thank you Sandra!!! 
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Melissa Blackburn reminded everyone about the Women’s Resource Fair next weekend.
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Paul Marsh, our Sergeant at Arms offered a raffle for $50 cash to win the bundle of cash that was accumulating if you could pull out a purple marble. The purple marble was pulled by Pete McGuire..
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It was announced that Sheila Harding was diagnosed with lymphoma and a card was circulated so we could share our warm thoughts with Sheila. Please keep Sheila in your prayers.
 President Mel Gallegos brought up our Speaker for the day, to round off World Understanding Month, Dr. Heidi Kraft who shared with us her seven long grueling months of deployment in Iraq with the Alpha Surgical Company, First Medical Battalion, First Marine Logistics Group, First Marine Expeditionary Force. She was the Officer in Charge of the surgical company’s Combat Stress Platoon where she and three others were responsible for the mental health care of 10,000 Marines in western Iraq.
Heidi was deployed for 7 months and towards the end of it, she created a list of the good and bad things she experienced in Iraq that took the form of a poem. She did this for closure, a form of self therapy. However, this list got circulated and led to many interviews when she returned home. She received calls from World War II and Vietnam Veterans saying how much this poem meant to them, and one of them insisted that every line of it should be a chapter in a book. So she wrote a 250 page book, Rule Number Two, that was published on October 23, 2008. She read an excerpt form some of it that brought tears to many of us. At the end, she sold her books, and ended up with a sellout on books brought to our club. It was very touching.
Here is the list that the book was written from:
Things That Were Good
Sunset over the desert...almost always orange
Sunrise over the desert...almost always red
The childlike excitement of having fresh fruit at dinner after going weeks without it
Being allowed to be the kind of clinician I know I can be, and want to be, with no limits placed and no doubts expressed
But most of all,
The United States Marines walking, every day, and having literally every single person who passed by say "Ooh-rah, Ma'am..."
Having them tell us, one after another, through blinding pain or morphine-induced euphoria..."When can I get out of here? I just want to get back to my unit..."
Meeting a young Sergeant, who had lost an eye in an explosion...he asked his surgeon if he could open the other one...when he did, he sat up and looked at the young Marines from his fire team who were being treated for superficial shrapnel wounds in the next room...he smiled, laid back down, and said, "I only have one good eye, Doc, but I can see that my Marines are OK."
And of course, meeting the one who I will never forget…the one who threw himself on a grenade to save the men at his side...who will likely be the first Medal of Honor recipient in over 11 years...
My friends...some of them will be life-long in a way that is indescribable
My patients...some of them had courage unlike anything I've ever experienced before
My comrades, Alpha Surgical Company...some of the things witnessed will traumatize them forever, but still they provided
outstanding care to these Marines, day in and day out, sometimes for days at a time with no break, for 7 endless months
And finally, above all else...
Holding the hand of that dying Marine
Things That Were Not Good
Terrifying camel spiders, poisonous scorpions, flapping bats in the darkness, howling, territorial wild dogs, flies that insisted on landing on our faces, giant, looming mosquitoes, invisible sand flies that carry leischmaniasis
132 degrees
Wearing long sleeves, full pants and combat boots in 132 degrees
Random and totally predictable power outages that led to sweating throughout the night
Sweating in places I didn't know I could sweat...like wrists, and ears
The roar of helicopters overhead
The resounding thud of exploding artillery in the distance
The popping of gunfire...
Not knowing if any of the above sounds is a good thing, or bad thing
The siren and the inevitable "big voice" yelling at us to take cover...
Not knowing if that siren was on someone's DVD or if the big voice would soon follow
The cracking sound of giant artillery rounds splitting open against rock and dirt
The rumble of the ground...
The shattering of the windows...
Hiding under flak jackets and Kevlar helmets, away from the broken windows, waiting to be told we can come to the hospital...to treat the ones who were not so lucky...
Watching the black helicopter with the big red cross on the side landing at our pad
Worse...watching gray Marine helicopters filled with patients landing at our pad...because we usually did not realize they were coming...
Ushering a sobbing Marine Colonel away from the trauma bay while several of his Marines bled and cried out in pain inside
Meeting that 21-year-old Corporal with three Purple Hearts...and listening to him weep because he felt ashamed of being afraid to go back
Telling a room full of stunned Marines in blood-soaked uniforms that their comrade, that they had tried to save, had just died of his wounds
Trying, as if in total futility, to do anything I could, to ease the trauma of group after group...that suffered loss after loss, grief after inconsolable grief...
Washing blood off the boots of one of our young nurses while she told me about the one who bled out in the trauma bay...and then the one who she had to tell, when he pleaded for the truth, that his best friend didn't make it...
Listening to another of our nurses tell of the Marine who came in talking, telling her his name...about how she pleaded with him not to give up, told him that she was there for him...about how she could see his eyes go dull when he couldn't fight any longer...
And finally, above all else...
Holding the hand of that dying Marine
Next week’s speaker is Jim Ponder speaking on how we can achieve more business with less stress and greater fulfillment.
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