Blair Rotary Newsletter
 May 27, 2002

General News

The Club will be sponsoring a two person 6, 6 and 6 golf tournament at the Rivers Wild Golf Course on June 21st.  The entry fee, which includes 18 holes and a cart, steak dinner and flag prizes, will be $120 per team.  Flights will be determined by the number of entries.  It is estimated that the club can clear about $1,000 on the event.  Please contact Bob Hill if you'd like some brochures to post in your place of business.  Any members interested in participating or helping with the event should call the River Wilds Pro Shop at 426-2941.

The Club will be sponsoring a circus on Sunday, July 7th.  Please watch future newsletters and attend meetings for details.  Proceeds from the event are expected to be around $2,000.

Club members are reminded that there is now an electronic way to do make-ups.  Please go to the following web site for details:  www.rotary5450.org/eclub

Notes from the May 21st Meeting – Program Chair - Mark Rhoades

Mark  presented a video of Blair (circa 1952-55) which was part of the "Our Town" series.  The video was transferred from film to a VCR tape and is available for sale at Enterprise Publishing.  It is also available at the Public Library.  Most of the Rotary members present did not know the tape existed.

Even though the video was made 50 years ago there are a number of familiar names and buildings.  The film begins with a trip across the old Blair bridge which was opened in 1929.  The original plan was to charge a toll for six to seven years but the toll extended long beyond that.  Additional buildings, businesses and people mentioned in the film include:

Rotary Question of the Week

 When is World Understanding and Peace Day?

(If you don't know see page 14 of the January issue of The Rotarian or take the following link to the RI website http://www.rotary.org/newsandinfo/rotarian/0201/page08.html

Rotary Fact of the Week - from www.rotary.org/newsandinfo/newsbasket

 The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on 20 May announced its selection of The Rotary Foundation as the recipient of the 2002 Gates Award for Global Health. The $1 million award recognizes Rotary's leadership and impact in the field of public health, most notably its efforts to eradicate polio by 2005.

The Gates Foundation commended Rotary for contributing more than $462 million toward polio eradication and mobilizing more than one million Rotarians to help immunize more than two billion children against polio in 122 countries. It also lauded Rotary for its health and welfare projects around the world, including a revolving loan program to help women in Uganda break the link between AIDS and chronic poverty, a project to provide free tuberculosis screening and treatment for children in the Philippines, and a major educational campaign to reduce the incidence of parasitic disease that reached more than 2.4 million children with more than 350,000 being treated for parasites.

"The Rotary Foundation is truly deserving of recognition for its exemplary achievements in the field of global health," said Bill Gates Sr., co-chair and chief executive officer of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. "I've seen Rotary volunteers in action and they do tremendous work. We should never take for granted the generosity and hard work of people in communities everywhere who volunteer their time and resources to make a difference in the lives of children and families in both developing and developed nations."

Thought of the Week

"The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall." Nelson Mandela

May Birthdays
Ed Jipp 12th
Jim Petersen 16th
Ken Rhoades 22nd
Blake Dillon 27th
Dan Veskrna 28th

Service Above Self!