Los Altos Rotary Club Home of the Annual Rotary Fine Art Show April 3rd, 2008

Greeters, JOANNE BYRNE, GARY MAGGARD AND STEVE POMEROY        

The meeting opened with DICK HASENPFLUG, back briefly from Scottsdale, leading the Flag Salute. With baseball season here again, JOHN MCDONNELL led the old-time favorite, “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”  PP MARLENE COWAN pitched out the Thoughts for the Day by quoting several baseball greats, which ended with Hank Aaron’s “It took me seventeen years to get 3,000 hits in baseball, but I did it in one afternoon on the golf course.” The only visitors today were PRESIDENT JOHN’s daughter, Jennifer Moss Drysdale and her darling 11 month old toddler Jacquie.

Announcements to note: KENDRA GJERSETH urgently needs a Relay for Life Co-Chair since she cannot attend the relay on June 21 at Los Altos High School.

JACK KELLY encourages us to attend the final Speech Contest competition on Sunday morning, April 13 at the District Conference.

JERRY TOMANEK announces the high school photo contest is on display at Main St. Café and Books throughout April. Thanks to PAUL NYBERG, MIKE ABRAMS, and JERRY for organizing this event.

PEN TRACIE MURRAY reminds us to volunteer willing nominees for the Los Altos Rotary Endowment Fund (LAREF), as nominations will be closed next Thursday.

DAVID BERGMAN needs us to sign up for the 54 open jobs at our Art Show May 17 and 18. Each member should volunteer for at least two shifts.

Via email:  JERRY MOISON reminds all the Art Show committee members that there is a board meeting tomorrow, April  8th at his office in Los Altos 8:00 AM

PP SAM PESNER reminds us of the Gardner Awards Dinner tonight, April 3, honoring our PP MARGE BRUNO.

PP SAM also invites all interested persons to his home Thursday evening, April 10 at 7 pm to begin planning how best to Kick Out dear ol’ PRES JOHN. Please RSVP to his email at pesner@aol.com.

KATHY BERRY, Co-chair of the Scholarship Committee needs one volunteer to help interview high school finalists April 21-25 from 3-5 pm.

KIM COPHER seeks used bicycles for the LA High School Interact project, and she even offers to pick it up at your home, if needed. The collection site is Los Altos High this Saturday 7 am – 4 pm.

TEN MINUTES WITH JOHN JOHN CARDOZA’s grandfather came to America from the Azores at age 11, since it seems there wasn’t enough room at home for the 10 children in his family. JOHN learned from his mechanic father how to repair cars in Modesto and attended high school there with the sister of George Lucas of Star Wars fame. Serving as an officer in his high school Key Club (sponsored by Kiwanis), JOHN greatly appreciated his Key Club advisor who also recommended him for entry to Stanford University.

Studying Engineering at Stanford, his goal was to become an airline pilot. Though his eyesight prevented this, he did learn to fly with the Stanford Flying Club and related his harrowing experience descending through thick clouds to land a plane with a fractured crank shaft in San Juis Obispo.

Stark naked in public? JOHN CARDOZA? Couldn’t be! But it was. When he took a swimming class at Stanford the men swam without any swim suits, and he mistakenly wandered into an open swim meet one day with his practice “uniform”.  

JOHN served three years as a communications officer for the Air Force at Cape Canaveral, then, went into microwave marketing for HP.  Later he worked for BUD OLIVER, who sponsored him to join LARC. His son is a graduate of UCLA and Georgetown Law School and recently made his father proud by joining Rotary in Virginia Beach, VA. JOHN enjoys flying (with PAT FARRELL), tennis and golf. JOHN served this Rotary Club as secretary for the past four years (admirably, this writer adds).

RECOGNITION  Finemaster, KENDRA GJERSETH knows how to collect, and SANDY BOZICH helped her by duck-bucketing. First, KENDRA gave us an opportunity to step up to last week’s challenge of “Who can donate most money?” Nobody stepped up. She also reminded us that each member is expected to contribute at least $100 to join the President’s Club each year to support LARC’s operating costs.

KATHY BERRY, Scholarship Co-Chair, was first to join the President’s Club today. DAVID SMITH also joined the “star club” in recognition for joining the LARC Board. MEL KAHN got close enough to touch the mike, so he, too, was fined. BILL MOISON paid in recognition of the $16 cup of coffee his wife and daughter had bought in Paris. New member GREG DABB contributed half-way to the President’s Club level. LOUIS WELLMEIER announced he had just received a phone call announcing he was going to be a dad. We’ll need more details about this call, Louis!

CINDY WEMYSS was invited to announce that she had just been named Regional Leader at Edward Jones. DICK BLANDING recounted the excitement of security agents and screaming sirens as he accompanied President Bush’s motorcade from SFO to Hillsborough with California’s Insurance Commissioner Steve Poisner.

JOANNA MEDIN paid to recount the great April Fool’s double-cross that her husband played on her daughter this week. MARGE BRUNO volunteered $250 to LAREF in gratitude for being selected by LARC to receive a John G Gardner Community Building Award from the Los Altos Community Foundation on April 3.

BOO BUE had just learned his tax bill, but decided he could cough up the final $20 to join the President’s Club. Numerous members of the “$40, $30, and $20 owed” levels were named and also joined the President’s Club. Great job as Finemaster, KENDRA! 

Also via email, JERRY TOMANEK sent in these pictures from the successful FILOLI GARDENS social last Saturday.  Twenty three members, spouses and friends attended. 

OPERATION BULLPEN SCANDAL was the title of Kevin Nelson’s presentation on forged sports memorabilia. “This was a true story,” he said, “and a movie trying to be made”. Nelson described the way Greg Marino learned to reproduce Mickey Mantle’s signature, and easily sold his fake signature baseballs in the memorabilia shop owned by his buddy Wayne. From there, they expanded to create a nationwide network selling forged memorabilia. Within 5 years his signature repertoire grew to include Joe DiMaggio, Joe Montana, Ronald Reagan, Thomas Jefferson and others.

However this $100 million business was finally taken down by the 3 year long efforts of 400 FBI agents in 6 states. Nelson interviewed both FBI agents and the criminals who only served 2.5 years in prison for this white-collar crime. Sadly, the FBI estimates that 50-90% of all signed memorabilia is fraudulent, so today nobody can be sure the signature they bought is authentic. Watch for the film.

{Copyright � 2008 Los Altos Rotary Club. All rights reserved}

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