This week’s meeting was held at the Mallinckrodt Center in Wilmette since the Community House was hosting the Antiques + Modernism Show. Twenty-five Rotarians were in attendance and no guests this week. The Village was represented by Mark Hornstein, Winnetka’s Interim Police Chief, while the WYO was represented by Melanie Challberg, their Program Director.
Mark Kotz gave the Thought of the Day and asked for prayers for those affected by the terrorist attack in New York City.
The club sang to Tony Kambich who was celebrating his birthday. He announced that he saw an orthopedist that had spoken to our club about an alternative to knee replacement surgery. On Monday he was given an injection of stem cells for his knee problem. He said he felt better, but a member asked him to report back to us in one year. Fred Schwimmer announced that he was invited by Keith Reed to the New Trier – Loyola state playoff game where New Trier scored 22 points in the last 10 minutes of the game under the leadership of Keith’s grandson – NT’s quarterback. (NT lost 35 – 32)
President Tom reminded the club of the benefit sponsored by some of our neighboring clubs for the District’s HealthRays project for Guatemala. The event will be held this Friday night, November 3 at Pinstripes for an evening of bocce ball and conviviality. Rich Lalley reminded the members that our club will be involved in distributing coats from Operation Warm and giving each child two books at two locations in Chicago this coming Saturday and Monday. Rich also announced that he attended a Rotary Zone conference last weekend and was able to introduce RI’s President-Elect, Barry Rassin, from the Bahamas, to the Winnetka couple Mary and Mike McLaughlin, originally from Jamaica. They are the couple that recently presented the work of their foundation, “Trees that Feed.” As it turned out Rassin and the McLaughlins have many friends in common. This unplanned meeting will likely result in a Global Grant from Rotary to support their project.
Happy Buck$ this week were given by: Barb Tubekis who was grateful for the success of the Volunteer Center’s Make a Difference Day which exceeded the goal of collecting 20,000 items by 4000. She thanked all the volunteers for their great work and members who stopped by to drop off their donations; Wes Baumann for Robert Mardirossian for wearing a sports jacket; Fred Schwimmer for Barb’s great leadership of the Volunteer Center’s successful Make a Difference Day; and finally Robert Mardirossian who reminded the club that in the ‘old’ days members were ‘fined’ when they had positive things happen that were in print.
Unfortunately our speaker did not show up. Mark Hornstein volunteered to use some of the time to speak about the results of a new state law that requires towns under 25,000 to consolidate their 911 facilities. The purpose of this law was to provide cost savings to the residents and greater efficiency and coordination. Last June Northfield, Glencoe, Kenilworth and Winnetka joined together and determined that it would be more cost-effective to sign a contract with Glenview who already was already serving Lake Forest, Lake Bluff and Highland Park. Glenview has a large modern facility and up-to-date technology that will be able to provide the required services. While our community’s 911 calls will go to Glenview, their operators will be able to direct the proper emergency services to the site of the incident being reported as quickly or more quickly as when Winnetka had their own 911 facility. Mark Kotz who visited the Glenview police station (as a vistor) confirmed that the 911 facilities was quite impressive. Thanks Mark for filling in so compentenly!