Rotary's Theme for 2015-16
The GREETERS:
01/21/16 Phil Raynes and Dave Wolf
01/28/16 Mitch Biederman and Dan Sortman
02/04/16 Vas Appalaneni and Raj Grandhi
02/11/16 Bridget Herzog and Jim Hester
02/18/16 Sivaji Subramaniam and Rand Oliver
02/25/16 Jeff Senney and Matt Kuhn
If you cannot greet on the day assigned, contact Kitty and she will schedule a replacement.
01/14/16
President Brad Thorp opened the Centerville Rotary Club meeting at The Clubhouse at Yankee Trace by leading the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag. Sivaji Subramaniam gave the prayer, and Brad led the singing of God Bless America.
The guests at the meeting included:
Our speaker Debe Dockins of the Washington-Centerville Public Library; Jennifer Heckman, a Natural Helper Coordinator for Reclaiming Futures; and Montgomery County Juvenile Court Judge Anthony Capizzi.
Our Greeters at the next meeting will be Phil Raynes and Dave Wolf.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
President Brad Thorp began the announcements by presenting Montgomery County Juvenile Court Judge Anthony Capizzi and Jennifer Heckman with a check for $1,111.25 for the Reclaiming Futures program. The money was collected from the group's Happy Bucks during the past meetings.
Mr. Capizzi thanked the club and noted that it will help many kids who face more challenges than many of us. "They don't have the benefits we do," he said.
President Brad said it is our pleasure to have someone who is as dedicated and "fair-headed as you are."
Our next Happy Bucks are to help support St. Vincent de Paul. Our newest club member, Bridget Herzog is employed by that organization, and Brad asked her to say a few words about it and its mission.
Bridget said that St. Vincent de Paul has two homeless shelters in Dayton, open 24 hours a day. People are served three meals a day, she said. The shelters, one for men and one for women and children, had 300 people in December, with 60 children. She said the group operates one of the largest food pantries in the area. It is open on the second and fourth Wednesdays of the month. Those with severe mental illness, who refuse services, also can get help. The organization has transitional housing in the Kettering Commons and 26 single sites, so any and all donations are appreciated, she said.
Brad said five service slots are set for members to work at St. Vincent de Paul on our March 19 in-service day. March 26 is the day those who couldn't serve March 19 will be able to do service at various venues.
Brad asked that we think of member Don Gerhardt, whose daughter is now in the hospital.
He said the club's next board meeting is Monday at 5 p.m. in Vas' s office.
He said the club has reserved a table at 7:30 a.m. for the Martin Luther King brunch at Yankee Trace. He said those to be at the table are Arnie, Peachy, Bridget, Kim, Ron, himself, and two students with the Centerville Interact club.
Happy Bucks:
The 50/50 raffle drawing was held at the beginning of the meeting and after Arnie won, Sgt.-at-Arms Erich Eggers hit him up to give it back for the new Happy Bucks recipient, St. Vincent de Paul.
Other Happy Bucks were given for various reasons. Erich said he would take a dollar for Don Stewart being late, which would put him in good stead for other late arrivals, but Don did him one better and said he would donate $20 for the cause.
Sivaji said he was "just happy," and Ron donated $10 for getting to see his infant granddaughter from California. Many gave for St. Vincent de Paul, and others, like Tom, for having the kids in for the holidays. Fred, of course, gave his dollar for being inside. Doc, AKA, Dick Hoback gave his dollar for getting the collar off his neck, which allowed him to drive again, and with biting humor noted that he can drive again "so I don't have to bite my tongue every time I drive with my wife." Jim Harris drove him to Rotary at least once after his surgery, but Jim has kept silent on any criticism his passenger may have made about his driving.
Judy Budi said there will be a membership committee meeting next Thursday.
SPEAKER: Debe Dockins, Community Outreach and Development Coordinator for the Washington-Centerville Public Library, speaking on the life of Bellbrook/Centerville resident Erma Bombeck
Erma Bombeck was only 9 years old in 1936 when her father died of the same genetic disorder she would end up dying from, polycystic kidney disease.
Our speaker Debe Dockins said Erma was born in Bellbrook on Feb. 21, 1927 to Erma (nee Haines) and Cassius Ediwn Fiste, a city crane operator. Her father was 33 and her mother 16 when they married. Two years after her father's death her mother remarried and Erma and her step-father did not get along.
Dockins said Erma was a good student in school and wrote for the Emerson Junior High School's newspaper, The Owl. The humorous column sometimes made her have to talk her way out of a school suspension, she said. She read a lot and loved James Thurber.
Erma attended Parker (now Patterson) Vocational High School, where she wrote a more serious column in the school paper with some humor added. In 1942 she got a job at the Dayton Herald as a copy girl, sharing the full-time assignmenl with a girlfriend. When she applied for a part-time job they had told her they only had a full-time position to offer, so she said she would work in the afternoon and the other girl could work the rest of the job. She met her future husband Bill Bombeck, a copy boy for the Dayton Journal, at that time, Dockins said. He was attending Chaminade High School.and ended up being shipped out to fight in the Korean War..
Erma's family had no money to send her to college, so after completing high school in 1944, she worked as a typist and stenographer for the Dayton Herald and several other companies and also wrote obituaries for the paper.
She attended Ohio University in 1946, but "it was a disaster," Dockins said. She could not get on the University newspaper and didn't do well in her courses, whereas before she was used to A's and praise.Her money ran out and she left after a semester. She became a Rike's (think Macy's now) employee doing editorial work for them, and also attended UD, There, her English professor, Brother Tom Price, asked her to submit an article for their school magazine, and when he slipped a note to her afterwards, telling her, "You can write," her confidence in her writing returned, She wrote for the university's paper, Dockins said.
Meanwhile, Bill Bombeck had come back from Korea. Erma graduated in 1949 with a degree in English, and they married the folliowing August, Dockins said. Bombeck converted to Catholicism in 1949, having been with the United Brethern Church before, and became a life-long supporter of UD.
From 1954 to 1964 Erma took over the role of housewife and mother. When she and Bill were told they would probably not be able to have a child of their own, they adopted a daughter, Betsy. Betsy was followed a few years later by the birth of the couple's two boys, Andy and Matthew, Dockins said.
The Bombecks moved to Cushwa Drive in Centerville in 1959, near where Phil Donahue also lived, and "Erma loved her role," Dockins said. She worked for the weekly Kettering-Oakwood Times, zone 59, newspaper in 1964 at $3 a week, and then Glenn Thompson of the Dayton Journal Herald hired her back about a year later at $45 a week, Dockins said..Her column went into national syndication in about three weeks, appearing in 36 major papers three times weekly under the title "At Wit's End." That number had jumped to around 500 newspapers by 1969, and she and her family moved to the plush Paradise Valley in Phoenix, Arizona. She had also written for various women's magazines and published books of humor.The Grass is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank was a best-seller hit with the public, though a TV sitcom.named Maggie, written by and featuring her,got low ratings and was dropped.She appeared on ABC's Good Morning America show for a number of years, and got to be grand marshal in the Rose Bowl Parade, established Camp Sunrise for kids who have cancer, and traveled a lot in her later years, besides her continued writing of books, etc., with her syndicated columns reaching 900 newspapers over the years..
In 1992 she was diagnosed with breast cancer, She survived that but not kidney disease, which she had been fighting for years.. She underwent dialysis four times a day for a number of years, but in the end her kidneys gave way and after a kidney transplant operation she developed pneumonia and jaundice and passed away, Dockins said. Her grave is located in Woodland Cemetery in Dayton. It has a 29,000 pound Phoenix boulder as a monument and the epitaph she requested: I told You I was Sick.
The former Bombeck home on Cushwa was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2015.
