Rotary Club of Marana
 
                                                                            
 Newly married President Elect, Tony Hunter, led the meeting today. President Jo turned the reigns over to Tony so he could gain some experience running the meeting before taking over officially 7/1/2018.
 
We did have a pledge, but no song, no prayer and literally not a single thought in the room. How can this be? You ask. All I can say is the reader will have to attend our next meeting and draw their own conclusions.
 
We did have a mighty fine joke however, from Lynne Himmer. "What did the 0 say to the 8? Your belt's too tight!" Now that's knee slapping humor if I ever heard it. I passed this joke on to an adult lady friend who did not get it. I am trying to recruit her as she would fit right in with our "no thoughts" crowd. But I digress.
 
Many guests including a former Exchange Student, Jen from Colmar,France and current Exchange Student from Nigeria, Mirabel. Two speakers addressed the club
 
 Beth Garrow of Zone 26 our Rotary Foundation Chair (our zone) and Pam Kerr former PDG in the Chicago area that encompasses Evanston, IL where RI is headquartered. Pam's husband, Andy was also in attendance primarily to make sure Pam did not leave something out of her talk.
 
Beth was very complimentary of our small club's record of giving. Unfortunately I missed much of the salient points in her talk due to impaired hearing.
 
Happy bucks galore, but again I regret to say I missed most of what was being said. I do know that Don, Jo, Richie Tony, Denise, Randy and many others are happy about something. That's good. Personally I did hear what I said so.....Had a great trip down the Rhine. Visited Jen's home village of Colmar in the Alsace region of France and became reacquainted with the WWII heroics of Audie Murphy. This genuine hero went on to additional fame as a movie/western cowboy actor in the 1950's. To me it seems very strange that the most decorated soldier in WWII and a man who made many movies, including To Hell And Back where he actually played himself  and was known to everyone in the USA is not recognized by many under the age of 60. Somebody once said "Sic transit gloria mundi." and you can look it up.
 
 Harold Burtzloff made a generous donation to our club's foundation in recognition of his 50 years in Rotary. Thank you Harold for all your service over the years. As many of you are aware Harold also is a recipient of the Wright Bros Master Pilot Award for being a licensed pilot for fifty years. It is an honor to be in the same club as you Mr. Burtzloff.
 
Lucky Mary won again(?) but did not draw the winning card.
 
 Pam Kerr made an excellent presentation regarding Rotary's work in Guatemala. Primarily she spoke of the goal of raising 2.5 million to purchase 29 x-ray units. Eleven have been funded and eight have been installed. Each unit can serve between 50,000 to 100,000 persons a year. This is a true Global Grant with Taiwan Rotary clubs sponsoring three of the units. The individual machine/operational cost is $73,000 to run for two years with individual clubs raising $23,000 with the balance from matching funds from District and RI. Cooperation among RI, the Guatemalan Minister of Health and other governmental entities has been wonderful. Pam provided two pages of documentation concerning this project.
 
By the way, Harold passed on a compliment to your's truly from Mindy Blake "Your writing is a perfect blend of humor, wit and facts." I thanked her for the comment and asked her to speak of my hidden talents to former members Jim DeGrood and Thomas Benavidez. Mindy, Jim and Thomas are all associated with PAG RTA. Mindy, if you are reading this we could offer a deal if all three of you wanted to become members.
 
Hope to do a better job next week if this head cold passes and I get back to my normal poor hearing.