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President Dick Troncone waited as long as he could for our surprise special guest to show up, but Noah never found his way to the Grande Ballroom. The meeting began with a warmly received announcement that the Board had decided to donate $25,000 from the Club’s unrestricted reserves to the Rotary Foundation Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund. Please read the Quick Bits column on page 2 for how you can also make a contribution. Ann Hill provided an Inspirational Moment in which she urged involvement with philanthropic work that speaks to our hearts. “America” was led by Steve Hubbard, accompanied by Greg Zinser on piano.
The History Minute covered the 1967-68 Rotary year, when George C. Jessop was president and the mini-skirt was on the rise (!). Janie Davis continued with the news, and then Rotary International President John Kenny (here from Scotland for RI’s International Assembly) spoke for a few minutes about the importance of the good work done by individual Rotarians. Peg Eddy introduced visiting students from Morse High, and Michael Brunker introduced visiting seniors, including one 90-year-old who looked spryer than half our members.
Two new members introduced themselves, including Associated General Contractors Vice President of Government Relations Brad Barnum, and Grah Safe & Lock owner Glenn Younger. Marlee Ehrenfeld made an announcement about the upcoming Sweetheart’s Day on February 11. Off-color limericks have been rejected as the progam’s theme. Sorry Dick. Please register your guests on our website. Ben Clay discussed some of the events in the planning stages for the Club’s Centennial in 2011-12, including a Summer Pops event in June 2011, a Founders Day luncheon in November, an event involving the Holiday Bowl in December, an event involving the military in the spring of 2012, and an event with the Padres in the summer. To help pay for all this, John Rebelo was fined for being featured in California Banker Magazine.
Chair of the Day Tyler Cramer, whose passion is education reform, introduced guest speaker James Lanich of the California State University Center to Close the Achievement Gap. He spoke of the need to break through the clutter of competing agendas to get to the real need to identify and replicate the teaching techniques that are working in schools today. Until recently it was illegal in California to reward teachers for improving student performance. He gave an example of two elementary schools in San Diego that have the same demographics and are eight miles apart, but one achieves grade level performance with 80 percent of the students, while the other does so with only 20 percent. The school that is doing well has never shared its best practices with the struggling school. Lanich’s organization is striving to change that. His comments were sobering and inspiring.
Editor of the Day: Al Harutunian III
Photography by Paul Nestor
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