Regular Meeting, June 9, 2010

Inasmuch as Jim Lowell is approaching the end of his presidency I wanted to publish this picture of him taken at what must have been one of his proudest moments: presiding at the 60th anniversary of the CLK Rotary. Dressed for the occasion, Jim here displays a banner from the Killarney Club of Ireland.

Our meeting Wednesday again was sparse of members with only 13 in attendance, Thankfully 6 guests were there to fill up the tables somewhat. Guests were Marie Buche and Debbie Bradford from the Houghton Rotary, Dave and Linda Grahek who have returned for the summer, Betty Kilpela, and our speaker, Shawn Oppliger.

In last week's blog, Dan, wrote about the seriousness of the low membership attendance. Question: is this just an anomaly, some sort of ennui or torpor settling in temporarily or is it more or less the "way things will be" from now on. Only the membership can answer that and I for one hope that the rest of the month as well as next year is more characteristic of our usual commitment to the CLK Rotary.

Our guest speaker, Shawn Oppliger, is the Project Manager and School Coordinator for the Copper Country ISD and Western UP Center for Science, Math and Environmental Education. She gave a spirited and informative program about the school projects underway for the Lake Superior Stewardship Initiative. One is amazed at the quality of the projects selected both in doing some good for the area and in teaching the participants leadership and stewardship skills.

For example, the C-L-K Horizons High School has 43 students working on "developing and implementing a plan to make the Keweenaw Mountain Lodge golf course into an Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary and Habitat for birds and bats. Another example is the 45 students from the Lake Linden-Hubbell Middle School working as stewards of the shoreline of Torch lake's Adopt-a-Beach program. These are the other fine example of the LS Stewardship Initiative were presented as well.

A fine program unfortunately missed by many. For more information, check out www.lakesuperiorstewardship.org.

Among others with June birthdays, June 9, was the birthday of our two oldest members, Joe Enrietti (85) and Capt Don (80). Joe is also our longest serving member. Joe showed me his orders for deployment on June 9, 1945 when he was deployed from Europe to the USA for a 30 day leave and later more training with the eventuality to be sent to the Pacific rim. Joe was a tail gunner on a B-25 in the Army Air Corps and is presently the only CLK Rotarian who served in World War II. Had the war not ended, Joe would have been assigned to a B-29 bomber.

Capt. Don served in the Korean Conflict as a sergeant in the Shore Patrol of the US Marine Corps but never made it to Korea. He spent his brief military career stationed in Coronado, California.

On behalf of all the June birthdays, Joe and Don presented a cake for our dessert and another round of "Happy Birthday" was rendered.

Incidentally, today's blogger forgot his camera so there were no pictures to mark the occasion..