Los Altos Rotary Club Home of the Annual Rotary Fine Art Show June 3, 2010

Wyatt shows Val how it's done.

Jovial Greeters ALLART LIGTENBERG, DON WITT, and JASON SANBORN welcomed us all warmly to the first meeting of President TRACIE MURRAY’s last month in office, while versatile JOANNE KAVALARIS, VAL CARPENTER, and PP CINDY LUEDTKE were being trained on how to handle the financial duties in the lobby by WYATT ALLEN.

At exactly 12:15, as always, TRACIE clanged the meeting to order in her own inimitable fashion and asked JOHN BOGART to lead us in the flag salute. ThoughtmasterSTEVE WU spoke about the true meaning of Memorial Day, citing the experiences and sacrifices of a young soldier from Santa Rosa. Thanks, STEVE, for this touching tribute.

Songmeister JEANNE MacVICAR said she wanted to sing “When Johnnie comes marching home again”, but was saddened to think of all the service men & women who had not been able to come marching home. So instead, this spirited Kansas cowgirl led us in “Home on the Range”.

Only one visiting Rotarian, a woman from San Jose, was with us, but she said her name before the microphone got to her and is therefore unnamed. We still welcomed her with a round of applause, however. Members with guests included PP JOHN MOSS (daughter Jennifer and her kids - little John & little Jackie), KAREN GREGURAS (Sarah Wedge – an alumna of LARC), ROY JONES (wife MO), and JOHN SYLVESTER (Judy Ott – a guest of the club).

President TRACIE offered congratulations to JASON SANBORN on the recent birth of twin sons and wel-comed DWIGHT MATTHEWS back from his recent medical leave. She also reminded us that the Silent Auc-tion would end at 1:15 and that we should feel free to visit the auction tables during the meeting to make and/or up our bids.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

• Treasurer SANDIE WHIPPLE reminded everyone that we are now in June and that all IOU’s are payable before the end of the fiscal year. Also anyone holding receipts for reimbursable items should submit them to SANDIE before June 30 or the club will express its gratitude for their contributions.
• Golfing enthusiast STEVE SHEPHERD, completely dressed for the role and carrying an antique golf club with a wooden shaft, made his final announcement about the LARC Golf Tournament, Barbecue, and poker game, which was to be held on Friday, June 4. This year there will be 48 players, including one all-woman team captained by BONNIE BURDETT. Thanks were given to LARRY MADSEN, STEVE ANDERSON, and LARRY CHU for their invaluable assistance with rules and flyers for the big bash.
• PP SETH MANNING reminded this year’s Kickout Committee of their meeting after the lunch meeting ended.
• ABBY AHRENS, just back from Paris and still sleepy, presented President TRACIE with a gift from the 19-member Rotary club in Villenueve, France.
• KATHY BERRY reminded us of the upcoming Relay for Life and announced that there were only four time slots still open on our team. This year’s event will be held at Egan School, and the team campsites will be on the grass inside the track rather than on an adjacent field as at Los Altos High School.

RECOGNITION

Finemaster extraordinaire KURT HUEG ascended to the royal throne to once again lighten the pockets of his loyal subjects while reminding us that it really is “all about the money”. With the fiscal year ending, he was obviously feeling the pressure to meet his annual quota. And truth be told, he had a very good day, welcoming all the following new members into the President’s Club! Contributions ranged from $1 to $60. Nice work, KURT!

BARRY GROVES was the first to volunteer, in honor of the 800 Los Altos High School and Mountain View High School students who graduated on Friday. This year the District is proud to have 113 National Merit Qualifiers – up from 86 in 2009. Also, LAHS was recognized for its efforts in making the campus more Green. BARRY also reminded us all to be sure to cast our votes for Measures A and L next week.

KENDRA GJERSETH brought greetings and a $20 donation from KAREN GESSERT, who was in Napa recently attending a conference.

DAVID BERONIO wanted to honor his mother who passed away this year – just 61 days short of her 100th birthday.

PP AL TRAFICANTI brought thanks from wife Nancy for the recent tribute the club paid her for all her work with PNG.

JASON SANBORN was still fighting sleep deprivation caused by the new twins, so KURT talked him out of $40.

BARBARA SMALL and GREG HARTWELL shared their impressions of their first Art Show and offered some ideas.

KURT then set some sort of a record for Finemasters by rounding up the following members who were within $20 of meeting their goal, then coercing them into standing up and agreeing to join: PAT FARRELL, BEVERLY TUCKER, FRANK VERLOT, MARGE SENTOUS, COETA CHAMBERS, SANDIE WHIPPLE, SCOTT RICHES, AND TOM LISTON. MARGE also wanted to honor her father for turning 90 and celebrat-ing his 1st wedding anniversary.

PAT GRAY celebrated her recently-published book.

JOHN McALLISTER rejoiced in his Low Net trophy in last year’s Golf Tournament

NANCY DUNAWAY competed in and completed her first Boston Marathon and had an amazing time!

PP WYATT ALLEN’s three kids all had recent birthdays and also won various softball and track tourna-ments

STEVE BIANCHI celebrated his 55th birthday.

ROY JONES had three things to be happy about: his granddaughter graduated from High School, he and Mo had their 42nd wedding anniversary, and he had his 78th birthday.

President TRACIE had already joined her own club last week, but today she announced that she would celebrate her 15th anniversary with husband Jerry at the Golf Tournament Dinner and Poker Tournament.

FINE ART IN THE PARK

PP SAM PESNER took the podium to give the club a final report on this year’s Art Show. This was the fifth time that Sam has been the show’s Director, which breaks the record of four he had shared with JERRY MOI-SON. Happily, the weather gods smiled on our efforts this year, and our results reflected this. As often hap-pens, many Saturday visitors went home to think about what they had seen and then returned on Sunday to become customers.

Net Income from the show dipped to $62K in 2009, which was caused by super hot weather and a rotten economy. So this year’s $75K outcome was a healthy 20% improvement. Plus this year we added $7K with our raffle and $3K from the Silent Auction. So we had a very good year!

As always, Sam was generous with his praise for the many people who had contributed to the successful re-sults, beginning with an overall salute to all the Rotarians, spouses, friends, kids, etc. who had lent their efforts to the program. He also mentioned that he had personally sent and received more than 950 e-mail messages during the year!

Then he saluted the nine people who had chaired the major committees that do all the planning, organizing, and executing: CLARI NOLET, COETA CHAMBERS, HERB MARSHALL, JEAN MORDO, JERRY MOISON, JOE LOCONTE, PP JOHN MOSS, MIKE ABRAMS, and STEVE POMEROY.

Special thanks went to PAUL NYBERG for his assistance with publicity in the Town Crier, JOHN SYLVESTER for arranging all the super entertainment acts for the show, ROY & Mo JONES for providing the two Grand Prize trips for the raffle, PP DICK HENNING for donating the season tickets for Celebrity Forum, LOUIS WELLMEIER for securing sponsors and all the wonderful items for the silent auction, and to PP JOE RENATI for starting the Art Show tradition 35 years ago.

SAM closed his presentation by reminding everyone that the 2011 Art Show will be on May 14-15 and by pass-ing the torch to next year’s Grand Poobah MICHAEL STADLEN.

HAITI PROJECT

FRANK VERLOT announced that next week’s meeting would feature a comprehensive annual report from the World Community Service team and then introduced ALAN VARNI to give an overview of the WCS plans for long-term relief in Haiti. ALAN reminded us that all of the Raffle and Silent auction proceeds would be going to the Haiti project.

LOS ALTOS ROTARY ENDOWMENT FUND (LAREF)

Having now heard from PP SAM how the art show accounts for most of the annual income of LAREF, it was certainly appropriate for HERB MARSHALL, Chairman of the LAREF Board of Directors, to tell us how the funds are managed and spent.

In addition to HERB, the LAREF Board includes JEAN MORDO, JEAN NEWTON-FRAGUGLIA, PHIL ROSE, RICK GLAZE, ROLAND PAYNE, PP SETH MANNING, President TRACIE MURRAY, and PE DENNIS YOUNG. HERB also announced that MIKE ABRAMS has joined the board of directors for the coming fiscal year.

Last year’s art show transferred $61K to LAREF, which constituted 71% of the fund’s income for FY 2010. In-vestment income represented another 21%, and various restricted and unrestricted contributions made up the remaining 8%.

The LAREF Investment Committee, comprised of PE DENNIS YOUNG, JOHN McDONNELL, PAUL NYBERG, and RICK GLAZE decides how to invest the fund’s corpus, which had a total account value of $385K as of May 31. They calculate how much to invest in any given year by taking the average net income of the art show for the last 5 years and putting 95% of it to work in a balanced mix of Stocks, Bonds, and Cash. This amounted to $68K in the recent fiscal year.

Distributing this money in FY 2010, LAREF granted $41K for community and youth programs, $10K for Part-ners for New Generations (PNG), $10K for Rotary AIDS Project (RAP), $27K for international programs through World Community Service (WCS), and $20K for Scholarships.

As you might imagine, the requests we receive for grants and funding far exceed the amount we are able to support. For example, we were able to grant only 38% of the total dollars requested by a plethora of very de-serving organizations. Each of the five areas named above has a steering committee which prioritizes how the money gets used in their subset of LAREF’s grant arena, and new volunteers are always needed and welcome in each of them. Please contact any of the committee chairpersons to learn how you can get involved in their areas of specialization. These are:

• For Community Grants – JEAN MORDO
• For PNG – BONNIE BURDETT
• For RAP – RICH CASEY
• For WCS – FRANK VERLOT
• For Scholarship – KATHY BERRY & PHIL ROSE are the Co-chairs

After announcing who the individual prize winners in the Silent Auction were and reminding the club about the memorial service for BRUCE CANN that was held on Saturday, President TRACIE adjourned the meeting a bit earlier than usual.

Photos from the Silent Auction