President Don Zillman opened the meeting by welcoming 60 members, 1 guest and 1 visiting Rotarian. Gracie Johnston offered us our invocation, where she reminded us that friendship is a gift worth giving thanks for and thanked all of us for being her friend. We then pledged our Allegiance to our Flag and offered a sonorous rendition of God Bless America, with Past President Russ Burleigh at the keyboard.
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Charlie Frair (at right) and Paul Tully co-chaired a committee composed of about 65 Rotarians to put together a lunch honoring our veterans of the military service on Veterans' Day. The feedback has been consistently favorable and effusive. The committee had five goals and all were satisfied. Through no fault of their own and with a lot of effort extended by our Public Relations people, it was felt that our Rotary Club's recognition by the media could have been better. The entire club showed their appreciation to Charlie and Paul for their outstanding efforts and results.
President Don read off a number of news pieces that were brought to his attention, such as the broad spread given to “Local Man Makes Hands” published in the Portland Papers regarding the 3-D hands being produced and taken to the Dominican Republic by our own International Service Committee.
Janelle LoSciuto led us in a brief song, “We Gather Together,” while Kathy Grammer accompanied us on the keyboard.
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Past President Don Lowry (at left) gave us a “Rotary Minute,” where he shared that it is the service and goodwill that Rotary provides to local and international efforts that have inspired him. He said that our club is but a part of a much larger worldwide organization. He lamented that a club as great and giving as ours has not attained a 100% participation in Foundation giving and encouraged everyone to do so. (See separate article this issue.)
For decades our Club has volunteered at Saint Vincent DePaul's soup kitchen on the Wednesday preceding Thanksgiving and provided the food, cooking, serving and cleaning, so that some of the many indigent in Portland could have a Thanksgiving dinner. Gracie Johnson, Community Service chair, has thanked everyone who has volunteered this year and is asking for some of those volunteers to help with the clean up. If you can, please contact Gracie (gracie.johnston@wcsh6.com) or Loretta - her assistant on Nov 22 (lrowe@maine.rr.com). Thank you
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Erik “Shoeman” Greven (at right) has been working with the Preble Street Resource Center for years and coordinating a number of Rotary efforts in support of their needs. Once a month we serve dinner at the center, which is great and important. We get to see some of our neighbors who are in need of so much. One of their needs is decent footwear, especially with the cold winter months upon us. Members are asked to bring usable footwear to be passed along to them. We still have time, so dig into your closet and bring in the "hardly-worn" and "in-good-shape" footwear you no longer use. Contact Erik Greven (egrev95@aol.com) and he will deliver them to Preble Street. Your donations will be greatly appreciated.
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Janelle Loscuito has been bringing her future-Rotarian son, little Luca, to our meetings since he was an infant (and before). We all seem to think of him as a member, so we get a two-for-one when Janelle’s with us (and we now know Luca is going to have a baby sister in a few short months). Luca is not just a pretty face and to prove he does his share to help the cause, his mom bought a raffle ticket from this week's Raffle guy, Jerry Angier (in photo at left), who showed us a new way to shuffle the cards (dropped the deck). Poor little Luca was deprived of a bundle of bucks for his college fund when he pulled a card closer to his age (the three of clubs), allowing the pot to grow.
Steve Mortimer (at right), in taking over as Champion of our Vision Committee, has taken on the important task of gathering our thoughts (aka herding cats) through a club survey, relative to what direction we'd like to move our club. The response has been low, so he requested that we please take the time to submit the surveys ASAP. The survey has been resent to everyone through email. If you don't share your ideas, you won't have any room to grumble. Contact Steve: stevenhmortimer@gmail.com.
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Our Dominican Republic outreach, spearheaded by Doctors Roger (at left) and Liz Fagan, are requesting that if you placed a “Hearts For Hearing” donation box out in the public for hearing aid collections, please pick them up and return them to Roger, so he can do any needed repairs before they prepare them for transit to the Dominican Republic on their upcoming trip. Contact Roger: drrogerfagan@gmail.com.
We are a strong and sizable club, but have not had a District Governor come out of our membership since Past President Bob Patten (deceased 2015). That was corrected when the nomination of Past President Dick Hall (at right) was placed to a vote, with a unanimous in-favor response. It’s up to us to give him our enthusiastic support. Thanks and CONGRATULATIONS, Dick!