Burl Nov 15, 2010
Tom McMurray gave the invocation, inviting us to remember the miracle behind each of the holidays coming up. Many guests attended today. Student guests from Eureka High School included Ben Ross, Sophomore Class President and Regan Lima, golf and softball athlete. They presented plans for their two-week trip to Mexico.
An empty chair at the head table cost November Rotary birthday boys and girls $10.
Jon Bradley talked about the Backpacks for Kids program, appealing today for granola bars for the longer holiday weekend. The program now serves 310 children in 14 sites with meals.
Carol Reisch of the Small Grants Program Committee reported on first round of awards to Youth, Seniors Community Health, and Water Quality.
Humboldt Senior Resource Center representatives reminded us that seven years ago of our club’s contributed to the “No Senior Goes Hungry Project”, also helping them with their marketing strategy, all a great success. 60,000 meals were served to homebound seniors last year. This year’s contribution of $1500 goes toward a new freezer for the center. A second SG award goes to St Vincent DePaul received by our own Don Smullin. The grant goes toward seed money for a pilot program serving meals to a group of families only. The dining hall is hoping to see people attending who would not normally come to the center.
Dec 1 is the Rotary Christmas party, Mike Cunningham, with invitations in the mail and e-mail -- $50 each.
The club will meet at the Eureka Inn Dec 6, with past presidents invited and Gary Barker giving a memorial presentation for Harvey Harper.
Alicia Cox won he Telly Award, a national award for her TV commercial of our own Dale Warmath of Leons’ muffler. $50 to Alicia.
Chuck Edwards won a contract competing with four out –of- town bids for rights to sell cable tv ads on local transit buses – a Five year contract that is starting off with a $100 recognition.
Nancy Dean went to Annapolis for the Meteorological Society Conference, where she “tried to understand people with foreign accents and a lots of formulas.” At the home of the naval academy (used to lots of water), meetings were canceled because of an amount of rain that we are used to here in Humboldt County. Nancy also contributed the $1000 to make Rotaract past president, Klark DePew, a Paul Harris Fellow. Klark, also our exchange student to Germany a few years ago, just got married, and is now known as Klark Shaw.
Gregg Foster reported on the Toys for Tots project, which now serves 4800 kids in Humboldt and Trinity Counties.
Dave Dillon introduced the program, Past District Governor (1984-85), Larry Meyers, speaking about Polio Plus. Larry himself overcame polio as a child, a disease caused by a virus that can be transmitted by touch. Two drops of oral vaccine can now prevent the dreaded disease. With Rotary’s involvement since the 1980’s, tens-of-thousands of polio cases have now been reduced to 753 in the world for 2010. When Larry was six in 1945, a polio epidemic spread across the US after WWII. He woke up one morning and could not move his head. The doctor came to the house, and an ambulance took him to the hospital where he was placed in isolation for five weeks at LA General Hospital before seeing his parents again. He was the youngest of thirty other boys in the ward. Nurses with heavy rubber gloves wrapped him with steamed-towels and army blankets eight times a day, an accepted treatment then, using hot moisture with stretching and massage to overcome the symptoms of polio.
Larry went from a bed to a wheel chair, still with very little use of the left side of his body. He recounted hearing an odd noise from a hospital room, so he turned his wheel chair into the room, where he saw for the first time the “iron lungs” that helped polio victims breathe. This was another type of Polio that Larry did not have.
Years later he worked with administration of the original Sabin vaccine. It was first administered as drops on sugar cubes because of its bitter taste. He was even able to give the vaccine to his own children, two and four years old then. He knew that they would never have to experience the ravages of polio. Our Rotary contributions mean that children around the world will never be paralyzed by polio.
To help end polio, Bill and Linda Gates donated $200 million through the Gates Foundation– the largest contribution given to any service organization. Recently that amount was increased to $355 million as part of a matching donation gift.
Nigeria reduced the country’s polio count to 10 cases this year, but trans-border infections are still common from countries that have still not been immunized. Genetic testing is able to show where the polio virus originated, which leads to immunization of selected areas. Outbreaks can now be controlled and stopped. Larry concluded, “We will be successful and end polio in the world.”
Submitted by Gary Todoroff
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