Rotary Club of Eureka, California

Meeting of the Rotary Club of Eureka

May 6, 2013

Pete Vallerga, member since 1986 and Paul Harris Fellow, led the flag salute.  Eric Bergel gave the invocation on the topic of what “shalom” really means. 

Lunch was Shalomi sandwiches. No, I’m such a kidder.  It was pork tenderloin, roasted asparagus, noodles, spinach salad with strawberries, and a chocolate cupcake. 

Student Guests
Larrisa Tolke, our foreign exchange student from Germany, reminded us of her fundraising dinner this weekend.  

Bruce Smith still needs one back up driver for the GSE team which arrives next Monday. 

The District conference is in Santa Rosa May 31-June 2. 

Our club’s 90^th anniversary is in October. 

Recognitions
Nancy Dean then donned her stovepipe hat for a rain stick giveaway.  Alicia Cox was sticked for her weekend getaway  to the Oregon Coast. 

Dave Wells is attending his daughter’s graduation from Law school this coming weekend.  It will be a big party which he hopes will end his financial donations to his daughter.  It seemed unlikely. 

John Bartholomew received his stick for an Ashland trip where he saw a good play, “The Unfortunate”.  His daughter is going to vet school in the fall. 

Kurt Barthel went to Mexico for Christmas, where he could have purchased his rain stick much more cheaply. 

Kim Bauriedel announced that next fall we will see the first ever exchange student from Siberia.  His name is Daniel and he’s from Vladivostok.

Guest Speaker

Pat Folkins then introduced our speaker, Cameron Renner, son of Mike Renner of Renner Petroleum.  Cameron is a Eureka native who went to college in Oregon and then became a 2^nd lieutenant in the Marine Corps.  He was stationed in Iraq in 2003 and again in 2008.  He said growing up in Eureka gave him a sense of community and that people were givers, not takers.   This sense of community served him well in the military. 

The 2003 invasion of Iraq was an “amazing experience” and he felt the power of the troops taking charge of the situation.  After the initial bombardment his soldiers went house to house to clean out the remaining combatants.  He felt that they pulled out too soon - after only four months- leaving a vacuum that drew in insurgents from all over the mid-east.  From 2004 to 2008 there was a counter insurgency with the destitute Iraqis taking money from the rebels to plant bombs because all the infrastructure had been destroyed and they couldn’t find work. 

Mike Renner

In 2008 the military realized that for the Iraqis to achieve self-government, a sense of community needed to be created.  In Anbar province they established trust by rebuilding the village systems from the ground up.  They gave weapons back to the police.  They created jobs.  Rebuilding the rest of the country and reestablishing that sense of community were the keys to winning the war.  When he returned to Eureka he realized that the community had changed and that his generation had a huge problem finding lasting employment.  When he was growing up everyone who wanted a job could get one.  They fit in to the community and could afford to be generous.  People gave more than they took.  Now people need to resort to less than savory forms of employment to supplement their meager wage, and there is no openness and feeling of belonging.  He said that Rotarians need to lend a helping hand to young people looking for work. 

Rotarians gave him a standing ovation.  

Submitted by Hank Ingham