Meeting Recap April 9

Twenty-nine members attended the April 9 meeting, along with Chuck Young’s two sons, Charlie and Jim, who came in from the West Coast to attend the festivities honoring their father.

 

The Club gave a resounding round of applause for two of its members - Patti Van Cleave and Chuck Young.  The Chamber of Commerce honored them the previous day as Winnetka’s Woman and Man of the Year. 

 

President Baker gave a last minute reminder for the District conference for the upcoming weekend.

 

Kristen Leahy announced that the Winnetka Youth Organization’s annual benefit would be held on May 1^st at the Community House.  Our own John Thomas will be honored for his many years of service to the “YO.”  Kristen invited all the members and their ‘significant others’ to attend.

 

John Thomas then announced that the Rotary Benefit this year would be held on May 16.  The benefit committee is still looking for items for the silent auction.

 

Rich Lalley told the members about the District’s “Rotary Days 5K run & 3K Walk” to be held on May 9 at Independence Grove Park in Libertyville. Rich will be participating.  All proceeds support the humanitarian work of The Rotary Foundation and its campaign to End Polio Now.  For more information, go to district’s website at:  http://rotary6440.org.

 

Our club celebrated the birthdays of Todd Stephens, Ned Meisner and Mike Malloy.  We also acknowledged the Rotary anniversaries of Heather Higgins (20^th) and Denny Lauer (40^th).

 

Happy Buck$ this week came from Patti Van Cleave, David Gotaas, Ned Meissner, Gina Sich and Heather Higgins.

 

Patti Van Cleave introduced the day’s speaker, her neighbor Richard Laible, a professional meeting host.  Richard had another connection to our Rotary Club; earlier in his life he dated Rich Lalley’s sister.  He told us his career was started after buying a magic kit from a Wheat Chex cereal box for 50¢ and two box tops when he was a young boy.  He made it through a 100-person audition at Second City and was one of two hired.  Richard worked there for seven years with the likes of Steve Carell, Mike Myers and Tina Fey.

 

Richard serves as a meeting host for many corporate functions.  His job is to get the audience involved.  He gave us examples of how he engages his audience with several of the exercises that he uses with large groups.  He stressed the importance of active listening and how he incorporates that trait into his performance.  In one of the exercises he asked the members to seek out someone that they do not know very well.  Each member of the pair was to briefly talk about their worst job, tell something interesting that they had done and tell their partner who was the most famous person they had met.  Then a few members had to introduce their partner to the entire group.  In another exercise each table had to create a story with each person adding only one word.  That produced some interesting stories. 

 

Richard said that once you get people laughing they are listening.  He also urged us to never say NO in our conversation but attempt to say YES and build upon the conversation.  Richard made us give thought to how we interact with people, especially those we do not know.  He concluded his performance with an amazing card trick.