Los Altos Rotary Club Home of the Annual Rotary Fine Art Show February 6 2014

During this drought stricken period we are currently experiencing, on the first day of measured rain the place to go for inspiration is the Los Altos Rotary Club.

As you proceed up the slanted walkway to the Garden House, the first people you meet are Greeters SHELLEY EMERSON, PP SAM HARDING, CINDY BOGARD–O’GORMAN and MICHAEL ELLERIN standing with outstretched hands and a welcome hug.

Walking in the main hall, JOHN CARDOZA accepts your meal money before you walk through the buffet line and find your seat with Rotarian friends. Your first observation is a lot of new faces here today including numerous red badgers who attended a meeting earlier in the corner.

At 12: 18 President JACK KELLY hit the Rotary bell and announced, “Welcome to finest Rotary Club in the land.”  In previous sessions the coverage included the world. Have we regressed?

PP MEL KAHN directed us through the flag salute and KATHY BERRY provided interesting quotes by Maya Angelou.  Examples:

• “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
• “I’ve learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you will miss them when they are gone from your life.”
• “I’ve learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life goes on, and it will be better tomorrow.”

BARBARA SMALL picked up on the weather and had us sing the old iconic Gene Kelly ditty, “Singing in the Rain.” What a glorious feeling, I’m happy again.”

President Elect KENDRA GJERSETH arrived in time for introductions of guests and the only visiting Rotarian was Marlene from the Richmond, WA club.
Rotarians with guests were: RON LABETICH, NANCY DUNAWAY, PAUL NYBERG and FRANK VERLOT.
In a sober and appropriate moment, PP DICK HENNING presented Gretchen Bue with a bouquet of flowers for her 90th birthday. Gretchen is the wife of the late PP BOO BUE who was our president in 1987-88.

Public Announcements:
President JACK KELLY announced Tony LaRussa would receive publicity next Tuesday as he is inducted into the Hall of Fame.

The San Jose Rotary Club will be celebrating their 100th anniversity at the HP Pavilion next week.

JUDY OTT mentioned SALLY MEADOWS had a hip replacement, but is home again.

BONNIE BURDETTE mentioned DAVID SMITH will have a LAREF board meeting “tonight” and it has been presumed held.

KAREN GREGURAS mentioned she needs help for veteran’s education of mathematics and other subjects for the veterans at Foothill College.

HARRY PRICE was in the City of Brotherly Love and brought home a Rotary flag to show to the club.

PP MONA ARMISTEAD mentioned the best seafood in Los Altos would be found at the Cioppino Feed, Friday March 7 from 6 to 10 p.m. It is $70 per person and tax deductible.
MONA also drew our attention to the San Jose Mercury issue of the day concerning the Rotary connection.

President JACK KELLY mentioned at the annual meeting our future club directors would be CRYSTA KRAMES, DONNA VERNA and ALLISON SALISBURY.

In a short ceremonial announcement, membership director JOHN MORDO inducted TED SORENSEN from a red badger to a blue badge.  TED completed all his red badge requirements in the time offered.

Katerina Seda and Adam Machacek, representing Los Altos World Records 2014, provided examples of possible Los Altos/Los Altos Hills world records and asked for members to provide input.

“Do you have an idea for a world’s record,” Katerina asked and provided the procedure to go through. The submission office is located at 359 State Street and open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
As a suggestion, MARK ROGGE submitted LARC has the most aeronautical engineers/rocket scientists in any Rotary Club in the world.

FRANK VERLOT’S 10-minute talk
The life and times of FRANK’S life was displayed on the screen for all to see although the printing was small and hard to read and fortunately FRANK went through it for the audience.
Providing his early family history, FRANK was named after his two grandfathers (Frank Oscar) with a Russian background.  FRANK was born in Gent, Belgium.

He grew up in Queens, N.Y. and was proud to have two musical stars Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel in his same Junior High class. After a period of attending Brooklyn Tech, FRANK mentioned that Neil Diamond was in his class at that institution.

Living in Queens/Forrest Hills area, Frank commuted by subway each direction he ventured. That included, as a Brooklyn Dodger fan he ventured to Ebbets Field numerous times to see the Dodgers lose.

After a period of attending MIT in Cambridge, Frank moved west and worked for Grumman and Lockheed.  Later he worked with United Technologies and Pratt & Whitney on the Trident and Trident II.

In 1989 when the wall came down Frank went to Russia and helped develop a new engine for missiles with success.

Frank is married to Marian and has two daughters. He wound up with his community activities but President Jack produced the hook and couldn’t finish a good story.

Recognition by JOHN SYLVESTER:
Leaving no time for economical excuses, our past president had no mercy in his fining FRANK VERLOT, TED SORENSEN, JULIA ROSE, STEVE WHEELER, HARRY PRICE and RON LABETICH each were $30 poorer and then JOHN sat down without remorse.      

Rotary Satellite Meeting:
If you want to know what is happening in our Rotary Club you should attend the once a month Tuesday Morning meeting held at the Jesuit Retreat House. This last Tuesday, 17 Rotarians including red badgers enjoyed breakfast and informative commentary.

President JACK KELLY opened the early morning meeting and discussed how Rotary Club presidents are appointed in other clubs and how we select our new president each year.
Other discussions involved having Rotary committees attend and have influence in Council meetings. There was a long discussion on possible Rotary clubs involvement in city issues.
There was a long discussion on the length of announcement periods at meetings. Should they be changed or limited to certain subjects?

What goes on at the Programs Committee? How are speakers selected?
This is an hour well spent at your Rotary club and you will probably sit next to someone at breakfast you wouldn’t maybe be sitting with at a Rotary Club meeting.  Good Stuff!

The Main Speaker:
In a departure from usual Rotary introductions, today we had the privilege of having Judge Pete Manoukian introduce the speaker, Carl Ray.

The Judge mentioned the killing of his Marine son and afterward the first person he saw was Carl Ray and that is the reason he is here today. “What I received from Carl is I don’t hate the shooter today.”

Taking the microphone in a black suit and speaking in intonations, Carl Ray said ”Today I going to speak about Forgiveness. It’s my favorite subject. It’s really all about how to speak to white people.”

As an 18-year-old black man he was questioned by an older white man and failed to address the man as “sir”, which was customary. The white man beat him for being disrespectful. Later he showed up at Ray’s home and shot his father eight times in cold blood. At his trial he was accused of being disrespectful.

After his father was killed he enrolled in Tuskegee University but was burdened with the guilt of causing his father’s murder and his life would never be the same. Later he was released from his self-made prison of guilt when he forgave his father’s murderer. He attributes the act of forgiving the man to be his own lifesaver.

In the next ten years Ray worked at Lockheed and in his next episode he quit and went to Hollywood to be a stand up comedian. Carl captures some hilarious moments, spun with the depths of his pain and his journey towards emotional healing and freedom.

“You have to let it go,” Carl said. The more you forgive the freer you become of the past. You provide a freedom on the other side of forgiveness.  Carl wove his message past the myopic view of forgiveness being for oneself. ”The more you forgive, the freer you become of the past.”
In one instance of forgiveness he said “I had a Rosa Parks moment” and with that he closed the meeting with exuberant applause not heard after every guest speaker’s performance.