Rotary's Theme for 2019-20   Centerville Rotary Club Meeting August 1, 2019   Official Greeters for the week:

 

08/01/2019 John Beals and Doug Bockrath

08/08/2019 Sofie Ameloot and Jack Durnbaugh

08/15/2019 David Hermann and Deb Dulaney

08/22/2019 Wayne Davis and Kim Senft-Paras

 

Our official greeters were Doug Bockrath (R) and John Beals (L)

 

Club Vice President Brian Hayes usually works on setting up the video equipment for the speaker, but he was off this day, so President-Elect Frank Perez did the honors.

 

Harvey Smith chats with our club president Chuck King (L) in this picture.

 

Jen Gibbs comes in with a big smile and info about the upcoming Boomer Fest at St.

Leonard. Our club treasurer Gerry Eastabrooks can be seen in the background.

 

Harvey Smith seems to get around and is greeted and greets.

 

There's that pancake ticket salesman Tom Broadwell. The man with the golden arm, it seems. He and Don Gerhardt could probably sell you the Taj Mahal.  

 

Joyce Young was trying to get out of the way of the camera, but the camera was looking for her and so the two met midway...with Joyce not looking to be in the picture.

Do these two look like comrades in arms. Guess which one just came back from scuba

diving in the Florida Keys.

 

Ron Hollenbecks makes a tall entrance. He's always pumped full of energy.

 

The scuba diver looks over his prey.

 

 

Former Centerville Mayor Sally Beals arrives, with Ray Merz not far behind.

 

A hug can be a good greet.

 

These guys have the same hair cut.

 

Rick Hauser arrives. 

 

And look who's back from Belgium and fun in Europe and soon to be a new U.S. citizen,

Sofie Ameloot. She visited Luxembourg and Germany while there.

 

Group picture with greeter walking with cookie tray.

 

Deb Dulaney (in red) has the biggest smile here.

 

Butch Spencer is always dressed like a Washington D.C. politician...tie, dress shirt, and no spots, etc.

 

 

 

The Centerville Rotary Club met at Yankee Trace at noon for the weekly meeting. President Chuck King led the Pledge of Allegiance; Ray Merz gave the prayer. And Jim Stuart led the singing of God Bless America. We might call it a start in basso.

 

Menu this week: Roast beef sandwich, French fries, Yankee Trace coleslaw and cookies.

Menu next week: Not on the regular schedule...your guess is as good as

mine...we originally were going to have a supper this day.

 

Guests this week: Our speaker Mandy Askins

 

President Chuck King presided over the meeting. He seems to have an alien side to him we didn't know, possibly from visiting the Mound Cold War Discovery Center.

 

Here is his official photo.

 

President Chuck King thanked our greeters and noted that next week's official greeters would be Jack Durnbaugh and Sofie Ameloot, who volunteered for the job to replace

Doug Bockrath, who stepped in to replace Vas Appalaneni, who is traveling.

 

President King said Don Gerhardt is attempting to get his strength back again so he can go back home from rehab and would still welcome any visitors to help cheer him up. He visited Don and was told he was one of the most popular patients in the facility, with about five visitors this week. Irene and Kitty visited him on Tuesday and found him looking great, but not able to put weight on his right leg yet, and not able to hold any weight with his right arm. He's working hard on the rehab though, he said, going about five miles with the help of a walker up and down the hallways each day. He needs to be able to get back up if he goes down, and until he can, he's in the best place he could probably be for now, and he's aware of that.

 

Jenn Gibbs said the Boomer Fest at St. Leonard on Aug. 10 will have an entrance off Clyo Road. Volunteers are needed to help with handicapped parking and to man a booth for Rotary. Volunteers were asked to sign up while at Rotary. Volunteers will get a Boomer Fest T-shirt and lunch, she said.

Next week will be a raffle for two tickets to the Great American Beer Festival. Chuck said he got the tickets, which are worth $30 apiece or $40 at the door...to be held at Fifth Third Field. The festival is Aug. 17, a Saturday, from 2 to 4 p.m. You get 20 samples of beer...

 

Next week is a Club Assembly.

The Centerville Dog Park program stops for the year, Aug. 26, President King said.

 

A flyer put on the tables for next year's Rotary Convention in Honolulu, Hawaii June 6-10 says you can register at riconvention.org

President King said reservations at the hotels have already been heavy, so if you plan on going, you might want to get your reservation in sooner rather than later.

 

President King said that he received a letter from the Artemis Center thanking us for our donation from Happy Bucks. The executive director who attended our meeting to receive the check said she enjoyed the time she spent with us.

 

Our female student from Thailand will be arriving on Aug. 4, a Sunday, so the club hopes to have Rotarians help greet her at the airport. It sounded like she will be arriving late  (11:30 p.m.), so you had best check with Brad Huffman. They would hope to have more than just one or two people from Rotary there to greet her

President King said Sofie Ameloot will officially become a U.S. citizen Aug. 15, at 12:30

p.m., downtown...conflicting with our meeting time, though some may want to attend the ceremony if they can. We will all be there in spirit...

 

Happy Bucks are collected by Past President Boyd Preston and Treasurer Gerry Eastabrooks.

 

HAPPY BUCKS go this quarter to Operation Warm, which provides new coats to area needy kids. Hannah's Treasure Chest works with us to provide the names and sizes for the coats needed as gathered from area social agencies.

 Gerry Eastabrooks started off the donations with $5, and many more added $20 for a coat. Ron Hollenbeck added $100, saying "I turned 100 this week." Sofie gave for being happy to be back at the club after 3 weeks in her home country and other parts of Europe. Butch Spencer gave for having three grandchildren born. Mike Wier and Sury Peddireddi gave for coats as did others. Ray Merz said he has been a Rotarian for 30 years and gave $30 to the cause. Deb Dulaney gave a happy $5 saying she had just been in Ireland and Scotland. Kim Senft-Paras gave for eight coats, noting that her youngest daughter ran in a 100 mile race and was the fourth woman and the 15th person overall. It  took 21 hours, she said.

A number of people gave to welcome back Sofie...among them Harvey Smith. Jenn gave a happy IOU of $5.

Kitty gave for a coat and $5 for her mom Irene's 96th birthday July 31, and the group all clapped for that and then Happy Birthday was sung for all the Rotarians with birthdays in July.

 

 

President-Elect Frank Perez introduced our speaker, noting that she has 10 years experience in the education and museum field with five years with Dayton History. She was a student at WSU, focusing on Cold War U.S -Soviet relations history, he said.

She is a member of the Miamisburg Rotary Club (one year thus far), She also serves as a committee member for the Miamisburg Historical Society.

Mandy said most of what went on at Mound Lab was top secret until the late eighties. In 1954 (see picture below) the Mound only had 17 buildings. Most people don't know about the five-story underground building that was also part of the Mound Lab research and development program, she said.

The laboratory was the first Atomic Energy Commission site constructed after WWII, in order to continue and consolidate Dayton's work with the Manhattan Project that produced the world's first atomic bombs, she said. 

From 1948 to 2003 the Mound operated as an integrated research, development, and production facility that supported U.S. nuclear weapons, energy and space programs, she said. Plutonium was needed for the atomic bomb.

During the Cold War polonium-beryllium initiators were used in early atomic weapons.  It also researched and manufactured radionuclides. In the 1950s it manufactured nuclear weapon components such as cable assemblies, explosive detonators and electronic firing sets, explosive components for the U.S. nuclear

defense stockpile. RTGs (nuclear batteries) were used for the energy.

We wouldn't be able to send anyone past the sun without the work done at the Mound, Mandy said. Radio isotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) were used to power space missions from Apollo to Pluto probes.

 

The Mound's secondary missions included nuclear material safeguard, radioactive waste management and recovery, the building and testing of nuclear generators, and the purification of non-radioactive isotopes for medical, industrial and agricultural research. In 1989, with the end of the cold war the Department of Energy initiated a reconfiguration process that called for the eventual closing of the Mound Plant and the removal of equipment and materials to other DOE sites. Non-weapons work was ended in 1972. The DOE decommissioned Mound in 1993. The production of weapons components was ended in 1995.

The Miamisburg Environmental Management Project (MEMP) was previously responsible for site cleanup. It worked to implement Mound 2000, an initiative to expedite cleanup. Nuclear energy programs continued at the site with the development assembly, disassembly, and testing of radio isotopic thermoelectric generators (RTGs) for the National Aeronautical and Space Administration's deep-space missions. The process of generating electricity through thermoelectric conversion using a radioisotope heat source was developed and patented at the site in 1954. Recent uses of the RTGs were in the Galileo and Ulysses spacecrafts, now on missions to Jupiter and the sun, respectively. Four other RTGs were prepared for the 1997 Cassini mission to Saturn.

The Mound Site was involved in a number of weapon and non-weapon programs until the late 1980s.

In 1978 the Mound Lab had 2,500 employees.

In 1993 there were 116 buildings on 306 acres, Mandy said. In 1993 it was decided that the Mound would close for good, she said. There was a 12-year radiation clean up to 2003, at a billion dollar cost so the area could be reused.

Today there are a dozen or so companies at the Mound Business Park and 500 employees work in the business park, Mandy said. Many are former employees of the Mound Lab.

The Mound Cold War Discovery Center was created through a partnership of Dayton History with the Department of Energy in 2016, she said. It hopes to preserve the story that a lot of people do not know, she said. There are over 90,000 photographic materials that were saved by employees, she said.

The Mound Cold War Discovery Center opened April 23, 2018, and the first year it had 3,500 visitors. Admission is free. It is on Mound Road, north of Benner Road.

There are interactive exhibits and school-age programs, one called Rocket to the Moon, in which the children get to shoot off model rockets. 

There are Boy Scout and Girl Scout programs, guided tours and a Mound lecture series held monthly on the fourth Wednesday at 7 p.m. The lecture series is free.

There's an annual open house in Dec. and community events. They are trying to preserve and collect archival materials and oral histories from Mound employees.

The center is open Wednesdays thru Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and other times can be arranged by appointment, Mandy said. For additional information you can call 937-247-0402 or visit online at www.facebook.com/MoundColdWar

 

 

 

At the end of the meeting, a few people stop to chat a bit more and catch up on what they've missed.

The Rotary meeting was adjourned with the reciting of the Four-Way Test