Weekly eBulletin October 23, 2013

Visiting Rotarians and guests: Odila Goncalves, wife of Captain Marcello Goncalves, Nora MacLellen of the Westchester Rotary Club, Colin Wolfson from the far-away Capetown, South Africa Rotary Club, and  Ellen Van Hollendar from new Rotary Club in the Netherlands.

Ellen  told us her Rotary club is about 10 years old.  A journalist and writer for a major newspaper in her country, she is here in the States to visit as many Rotary Club as she has time for.  She brought a club flag and exchanged for one of our flags with past-president Nancy Campbell.

Visitor Nora MacLellen, by now a familiar visitor to our club, talked about an activity by the LMU Rotaract Club. Rotaractors there are sponsoring a celebration to recognize the Vision-to-Learn project on November 7.  [click your BACK button to return to this page] It will be held at Loyola Village Elementary on 8821 Villanova Ave, in Westchester starting at 10 a.m.

Nora is also the sparkplug behind the Vision-to-Learn program. Several Redondo Beach Rotarians volunteered a few weeks ago to participate in the project by assisting to screen the vision of 1st, 3rd, and 4th graders at Washington Elementary School.  The screening is done in conjunction with state mandated vision screening of 2nd and 5th graders.  Washington Elementary is one of three Title 1 schools in our South Bay communities the Vision-to-Learn is assisting.  Special thanks to Laura Fields for spearheading this project.

The exciting news Nora announced is that LMU Rotaractors secured a $10,000 grant from United Airlines to help sponsor the project. The goal is to provide the gift of a free eye exam and up to 300 free eyeglasses that are needed for youngsters to succeed in grammar school.  Plans are afoot to add three more Title 1 schools to the Vision-to-Learn project.

Chat Campbell and Jim Chen provided meals-on-wheels today to Redondo Beach shut-ins. Thanks guys.

Announcements:

October is Vocational Service Month. A table is available for members to display their company brochures and other promotional literature.  All members are encouraged to familiarize themselves with the occupations of other members.

The La Paz, Mexico trip is scheduled to depart LAX on Thursday, October 31st , at 10:00 a.m. and return Sunday, November  3rd at 5:17 p.m.  See Terry Bichlmeier for more details, or if you are interested to go on this trip.

Gayle Bailey gave us a status report of the John Parsons Scholarship Fund. “Over $7,000 has been donated so far,” she said.

Secretary Monique Waite asked all members to submit make-up reports if they attend other Rotary Club meetings. Make-ups count toward our club attendance, she said.  Monique said she and her hubby are taking a trip to Coast Rica and have 270 lbs worth of suitcases to fill up with children’s items—clothes, shoes,  toys, etc.— for distribution there.  If members have children’s items they’d like to donate, contact Monique.

Jeff Melodia announced the Rookie Event tentatively set for November 16th has been cancelled.  It will now be held sometime in the spring of 2014.

Bill Gard says we’ve only sold about 30 tickets to the UCLA/USC Tailgate Luncheon. As members know this will be a joint meeting with four Torrance Clubs, and that our club is now a sponsor of the activity. Therefore, we are responsible for 60 tickets.  Scheduled for Tuesday Nov. 26, 12:00, it will take the place of our regular Wednesday luncheon.  See Bill Gard or Scott Fellows for tickets.

Talking about Scott—seems a week can't go by without talking about Scott, or Scott talking about something or other—he reminded us there are about 30 squares left on the football pool for the game.  At $10 a square, the winners will go home with Big Bucks.

Bill Paul announced the Tailgate Luncheon organizing committee is seeking two volunteers from each of the five sponsoring clubs to assist on the day of the event.  Volunteers must be available from 9 a.m. until the conclusion of the event about 1:30.  See Bill to offer your services.

Advertising opportunities in the Tailgate Luncheon brochure are still available.  See Scott, Bill Gard or Bill Paul.

Program:  Our luncheon speaker was Rotarian Kate Rosloff.  She serves on the Rotary Rose Parade Float Committee.

Rotary International has sponsored a float in the Rose Parade for 35 years. As an interesting historical aside from Kate’s presentation, PDG Eli Gauna said he served on that first float committee 35 years ago and that the cost was all of $5,000!  Kate noted the budget for Rotary’s 2014 Rose Parade Float (rendering seen above) is $120,000 with the float itself costing $90,000. (Is that called inflation? Oh well, back to Kate.)

“We have a committee of 120 Rotarians from 36 districts on the committee,” she said. Although affiliated with Rotary “and we have a separate corporation that is not a formal part of Rotary International. However, there are six primary districts that sponsor the float. They raise most of the money for the float project, and host a private breakfast of the international presidents of the major service clubs: Rotary, Kiwanis, Lions and Optimists. Altogether, we will have 1,300 volunteers who donate about 11, 250 volunteers’ hours preparing the float for the Rose Parade.

“We have to look at two themes to adopt a design for our float: the 2014 Tournament of Roses Theme which is 'Dreams Come True' and the Rotary theme is 'Engage Rotary/Change Lives.'”

Kate told us the float has been under construction for several months by the Phoenix Decorating Company.  It is one of 13 that Phoenix is building for the 2014 Rose Parade. In mid-July, the Rotary float passed two required tests of all float entries.  In addition, the 2014 float will no longer carry the word “International”  Instead, it will be known simply as the Rotary float.

Kate said all volunteers for the 2014 float doing the final decorations will wear a Rotarian at Work tee shirt. At the bus barn where volunteer work is one other service organizations stand out prominently—more so than Rotary—because they wore colorful tee shirts emblazoned with their club service name.

Raffle: Jim Chen finally woke up and realized his number was called, but alas, he did not pick the green marble.  So he got the consolation prize of $10 and promptly donated it back to the club.