Club President Brad Thorp opened the Centerville Rotary Club meeting at The Clubhouse at Yankee Trace by leading the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag. Ray Merz led the prayer, and Brad led the singing of America the Beautiful.

 

 

  Club member Ron Hollenbeck presented Bob Neff, master gardener at the VA Gardens and Grotto with a check for $1,225 to help support the VA project. The money was collected from the second quarter's Happy Bucks. 

 Neff, in turn, presented the club with a poster of the gardens, designed by a master gardener. He said Ron has been the most dependable and productive volunteer at the VA project. The other day Ron came into Bill's Donut Shop in Centerville, totally red from working out at the Grotto and gardens, placing mulch in 90 degree weather. 

 

  It was noted again that the Rotary Cocktail Club would be meeting at the Warped Wing Brewery Co. at Fourth and (26) Wyandot streets in the Oregon District from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Thursday July 30.

 

 Emily Reeve, a 2014 recipient of one of our club's Rotary scholarships, gave the club an update on some of the volunteer service work she has been doing at Notre Dame. She said every Sunday she has taught Sunday School to local kids and has attended community-based service learning programs offered by Notre Dame in South Bend. She did a writing/rhetoric program and this summer will do a three-credit-hour service in Chattanooga, Tenn., working with Habitat for Humanity. She will be able to apply some of her engineering studies learning during that period, she said. She thanked the club for giving her the scholarship opportunity to help her with her career and said she will be helping design and build a bridge in Nicaragua for children to use in crossing over water areas next year. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brad noted that Mr. Shula came from Peoria, Ill., in 2000, and that he has been a member of the Cincinnati Rotary for the past 14 years. 

 

District Governor Bill Shula noted that Rotary's theme this year is "Being a gift for the world." He said we all need to think about how we can be a gift to the world. He said we are who we are because of others. "Someone got you where you are now," he said. We have to think about this year and into the future.

 He gave a personal example of how he owes his life to the life-saving gifts of a number of people. His story involved being saved after having an abdominal aneurysm in April and then, a few weeks later, a blood clot in his leg. He said his home is in Bethel, Ohio, and that he got ten gifts that saved his life, including two helicopter rides to the hospital and the right people being in the right place at the right time.

 He was returning from a day at the Wetherington Country Club, working out until 6:30 p.m., and almost home when he blacked out, hitting a telephone pole, after just missing a car turning across his path. The woman in the car called 911 and got the right fire department, one that knew enough to call for a helicopter, which had the needed blood and plaza and the head physician on board. Mr. Shula had to be cut out of his two-month-old car. Two policemen happened to be on duty whereas there was usually only one, so one could stay with the car. At the hospital the head physician was on duty and he had surgery that night. Three weeks later he was walking around his neighborhood when he got a blood clot in his leg and had to be rescued a second time. "I thought I was in charge," he said, but he found "there were so many people giving their gifts and talents," and these gifts were what saved his life. His wife also had to give him two shots with a needle in his stomach each day during the time she would normally have had off for herself from her job.

 Mr. Shula said he grew up in Cleveland. In the 1950s, kids made fun of other kids in the parochial school there who had disabilities from Polio. Now, with Rotary's help, Polio has been eradicated from most countries, except Pakistan and Afghanistan, he said. He learned from Rotary that "everyone of us has something to give," something that "can make a genuine difference in the lives of others."  He said Rotary should stay involved in Polio eradication before moving on to water projects. 

 He said Rotary clubs need to have a strategic plan for our district and decide where the district will be in the future. Clubs need to make their communities more aware of the service they do and also get involved in international projects. They may need to work together to get a global grant, he said. Rotaract and Interact are part of Rotary's future, so communication with these groups should be on-going, he said. He reminded  everyone of the upcoming Trilogy at 5:45 p.m. Sept. 9 at Normandy Church. Other group meetings should also be attended to help make the district a "world class district," he said.

 He closed his talk by showing the pair of pants he was wearing that had to be cut off of him when his rescuers saved his life after the car accident. He said he would like to know the name of the person who cut them off. There were two men and a woman present when the deed was done, and he said he doesn't believe it was the men who cut them off.