MEETING OF DECEMBER 5, 2002
By Dick BlandingTo help us segue from cooking Thanksgiving dinner to our first club meeting afterward, Alan Lambert led us in a semi-rousing rendition of Home on the Range. The pace quickened with Kelly Hudson providing a suggestion, to “spend a moment each day, thinking of someone to thank.” Good thought, Kelly. Thanks!
Dr. Dick Henning introduced the gentleman who had hired him for his first job as a teacher, a few years ago. Bob Adams reminds us all to bring a $10 or less gift marked B or G to our next meeting, so the kids at Alta Vista can carry out their annual distribution of presents to needy children.
If you haven’t already, be sure to sign up with Tracie Murray for our very elegant Christmas Party at the Jesuit Retreat on the 18th. After the first of the year, the club is holding a progressive dinner on January 25th. Please contact Shelly Potvin to offer your home for this event. And remember to sit with someone else besides your regular pals that you sit with every Thursday at lunch! Time to get out and meet the brothers and sisters!
Do you remember Gary Ross’ little daughter, who danced her Irish dances for us earlier this year? She’s bounced those redheaded curls right through the statewide events, and will soon travel to the national competition! What a nice holiday present it would be to see her dance again on our stage.
President Mary announced a multi-year club project will be to help our local Rotacare serve the medical needs of the poor. And she pointed out that seven countries still need to get their kids vaccinated for polio, in order to complete the worldwide eradication of the disease which was once the leading crippler of children. See Mary to volunteer to help in making this happen between now and next March.
Hearing Allen Ligtenberg’s five minute talk really brought home the reason we have these. You could sit by him at lunch for a decade and never know some of the history he survived. He was born in 1941 in Indonesia, and spent the next three and a half years in a Japanese concentration camp in Java. His father was less fortunate yet, being assigned to work on the notorious Burma Railroad. After the war, Allen was educated in the Netherlands, achieving his B.S. in 1964. Following a three year exchange experience in the U.S., he returned to Delft to earn his Masters Degree. He came back to a job here with Westinghouse, then spent twenty years with Hewlett Packard as an engineering manager in a variety of fields. In 1991 he took advantage of an early retirement opportunity from HP, and set out on a quest to improve health conditions for remote peoples and help reduce the cutting of forests for firewood at the same time, by devising and distributing several different types of very inexpensive solar cookers. This great adventure has taken him to such exotic places at Nepal, Peru, Bolivia, Mongolia, and in the year 2000 he and his wife hiked to the base camp for climbers of Mount Everest, to help spread the benefits of his solar cooking technology.
Allen has two young grandchildren, enjoys tennis a lot, and adventure travel, trekking, skiing, coaching AYSO soccer, and even making a little beer in a solar still at home.
Attention all Past Presidents: don’t miss the annual election process of our new President-elect-elect, at 8:30 a.m. on Thursday, December 12th. Firooz will email you the meeting location shortly.
Marge Bruno introduced her neighbor Gary Cavalli for our program today. Gary is the prime mover behind the new San Francisco College Bowl game, having spent the past thirty years involved in both college and pro sports. He’s even written a book, Stanford Sports, a personal favorite of Bob Adams.
The question of “Why another bowl game?” (there are 28 already) was answered as follows: (1) it creates an event with great benefits to the host city, in increased tourism and hotel business. Ten to twenty thousand people will come into
town, spending around ten million new dollars in the local economy. (2) it provides a rich and rewarding experience for two groups of college football players who would otherwise not have that opportunity. and (3), in this case it provides a needed injection of rent income to support PacBell Park.
Gary has found an ideal sponsor, the Diamond Walnut Company, so the official name will be the Diamond Walnut San Francisco Bowl. Folks will have lots of fun with that, no doubt. He said the television broadcast company (ESPN in this case) dictates when the game is played. Luckily for him, they approved playing this bowl game on New Year’s Eve, so attendees can make an evening of it with dinner beforehand, the big game, and then walk a few blocks to see the city’s fireworks celebration for the New Year.
One team in the bowl this year will be the Air Force Academy (8-4). The other will be Virginia Tech (9-3). Gary mentioned that the UCLA vs. Washington State game this weekend will determine the participants in no less than nineteen bowl games. Amazing! Even with 23,000 tickets already sold, he will keep the marketing push going during this month due to the intense competition, until they’ve sold all 37,000 seats.
The NCAA states that 75% of each dollar of income goes to the two schools playing in a bowl game. That translates to around $750,000 to $800,000 for each school in the San Francisco Bowl, plus a lot of fun for some college athletes and for many celebrants this New Year’s Eve.
Webmaster's Notes: A new page has been added to the Partners for New Generations pages, thanks to the efforts of John Cardoza. The new page is at: Los Altos Rotary Club - Volunteers for Partners for New Generations. Other pages for Partners are at: Partners for New Generations finds opportunities for volunteers for youth
Programs and Events
December
December 12: John Elman, Humorist, “Looking for Laughter in All the Right Places”
December 18: Holiday Party
December 19: Main Street Singers, Los Altos High School, “Holiday Music” Choral Music: Mark Shaull Director
December: 26: No Meeting, Happy Holidays
January
January 25: Progressive Dinner
OTHER ROTARY CLUB MEETING PLACES
MONDAY
Palo Alto: Rickey's Hyatt House, 12:15 p.m.
TUESDAY
Los Altos Sunset: The Echo Restaurant, Los Altos, 7:15 p.m.
Sunnyvale: Ramada Inn, 12:15 p.m.
Mountain View: Adobe House, Moffett & Central, Mountain View, 12:15 p.m.
WEDNESDAY
Menlo Park: Menlo Park Recreation Center, Menlo Park, noon.
Woodside/Portola: Woodside Village Church, Woodside, 7:30 a.m.
Sunnyvale Sunrise: Wild Woodys Grill, Sunken Gardens Golf Course, 7 a.m.
Cupertino: Quinlan Community Center, 12:15 p.m.
THURSDAY
Palo Alto Sunrise: Scott's, Town & Country, Palo Alto, 7:15 a.m.
Yosemite: The Ahwahnee Hotel, Noon
FRIDAY
Palo Alto University: Sheraton, El Camino, Palo Alto, 7:30 a.m.
Lake Tahoe: Harvey's Hotel, 12:15 p.m.
"Information in this newsletter is intended for the exclusive use of the members of the Rotary Club of Los Altos to facilitate the work of the club and to promote club fellowship. It is not to be used for any commercial or outside, unrelated, non-profit purposes. No publication of material in this newsletter should occur without the express permission of the club President or the Editor of the Rotator."Copyright 2002 The Los Altos Rotary Club
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