April 3 "A River Runs Through It" April 9 Spring Tea

Next Week... April 3 "A River Runs Through It" Meg Sullivan, UCLA Senior Media Relations Officer, is a recent graduate of UCLA Extension's grueling four-year landscape architecture program.  For her thesis, she spent a year studying how to return a creek that once ran through UCLA and Westwood. Upcoming Meetings... April 10 "Craft Talks" Dwight Heikkila and Sarosh Motivala Upcoming Events... April 9 A traditional Spring tea amidst many flowers will be held in the home and gardens of Jim and Carol Collins. A popular highpoint of the Rotary Auxiliary calendar, the tea starts at 11:30 a.m. and all Westwood Rotarians and their spouses are invited. Please make reservations with Margie Downie, 310.394.4827.

This Week...
WALKING ACROSS the US, at WVRC on March 27th
LEO TSENG led the Pledge, first reminding us that he is one of the few among us who wasn’t born here, and thus CHOSE citizenship.  The vociferous Pledge that resulted showed that everyone was listening – Thank You, LEO.  LENNY came forward to lead us in I Been Workin on the Railroad, complete with all five verses!  ART HENRY (who you might suspect has done this before) gave the Invocation.  He began by asking that we be taught openness, paying heed to what may be messages that come to us from others, to be open to the Lord’s wisdom, and to guide us in the ways that Rotary teaches.  Well done, as expected, ART.

Alas, we had but one guest – but she makes up for a lot, that being SUNNY.  I then happily arose to collect from those terrible scofflaws who weren’t wearing their Rotary pin!  While I didn’t take names, I did deliver 140 bucks to DON NELSON. Apparently I didn’t hear that this could also pay for a new Rotary pin, but that was declared to be the case.  So, next week, I will have pins if you paid the fine.

Speaking of next week, that will be the inaugural of our new “pay-in-advance” for parking at St. Albans across from the Faculty Center.  We have fifteen spaces, and I gave out 10 (or 11) of the spiffy new passes, plus mailing out the balance to those who qualified but weren’t present.  And in our continuing attempt at full divulgence, here are the ‘chosen’ recipients: TERRY R. WHITE, DICK ROBINSON, RAY ZICKFELD, AL BELANCA, PP TOM LENEHEN, LENORE MULRYAN, PDG BILL GOODWYN, CURT SMITH, ELLIOTT TURNER and LEO TSENG, with the following four being mailed out – PP DAVE WHITEHEAD, JOHN WOODALL, SEAN McMillan and ANN SAMSON.  (Note that ANN’s is for the Speaker each week). So, starting on 3 April ’08, if you don’t have a pass, please DON’T park there, OK?  While I do realize that money isn’t important to most of you, I should add that DON will be billing you for $65 per quarter, in recognition of there being just 13 weeks in each quarter.

ELLIOTT TURNER came forward to announce that the WAPI Assembly program would take place on Saturday, April 19th, at Westwood United Methodist Church, starting at 0900.  All sorts of goodies will be provided, including pizza, with festivities scheduled to end by 2:30 or maybe sooner.  This is not only fun, but of real value to the recipients of these simple yet effective water purification devises. Rotarians, Rotaractors, children and friends are all welcome. Please mark it on your calendar!

LEAH VRIESMAN reminded us all of the approaching Medicare Drug Benefit deadline. Should you wish to change your provider, the last day you can do so is this Monday, the 31st of March.  Also, next year you cannot change, so this is an important deadline.

Note the Auxiliary Meeting on April 9th, featured on the front page, please. The District Breakfast will be Thursday May 1st at the Westin LAX Hotel.  Speaker is a Calif. National Guard pilot talking about her experiences in the Middle East..  Cost is $25 and DON NESON will take your reservation.  Not that it makes any difference to most of you, but the Speaker is a former Miss California…

Japanese Youth Exchange Program deadline is March 30th, and four of our members have applied. Call Tori at the District office (310) 670-9792. And a further note on the aftermath of our Jack Smith program:  The Huntington has scheduled FOUR bird walks, on April 7th, 16th, 24th and May 10th.  The first two dates are already full, but the 24th and 10th have a couple of openings, so if you want to be included, email Natalie Russell at nrussell@huntington.org to reserve a place.  Also, Al Martinez, a columnist for the Times, will be talking about his reflections of Jack Smith at the Huntington on Sunday April 13th at 2:30 pm.  I’m going, and if you want to join me, lemme know, please. Finally, looking ahead to the Convention, the Far West breakfast will be on Monday, June 16th at the L.A. Convention Center, 0700 to 0845.  Tickets are limited, so let President CHRIS know if you wish to attend, please.

The aforementioned President CHRIS provided an interesting and informative Anatomy of the One Dollar Bill, as noted by the University of Notre Dame. There were many detailed illustrations – an excellent production.  For instance, President Eisenhower added “In God We Trust” in 1957. The Great Seal features the number 13 (our 13 original Colonies, 13 signers of the Declaration of Independence, 13 stripes on our flag). The Great Pyramid is not finished – because we as a nation are still developing. The dollar bill is composed of 25% paper and 75% linen, and costs about 4 cents to print. The dollar’s average length of life is about two years, and 7.5 billion are destroyed by the treasury each year, as they wear out.  Thanks, CHRIS – that was excellent!

PEGGY BLOOMFIELD introduced our Speaker, Eric Latham.  He covered 3,591 miles, from the Atlantic Ocean off North Carolina to the Pacific at San Francisco.  This took 206 days, and he walked every step. He traversed twelve states.  This effort was in behalf of the American Cancer Society, and he raised over $20,000 enroute.   His mother is a cancer survivor, and his dad works in cancer research.  Eric graduated from Virginia tech, with a concentration on communications.  He was working as a news coordinator for ABC TV in Las Vegas when he put together his walking plan.  You can reach him at (276) 494-1656 and elathon@walkaboutamerica.org.

Eric is an accomplished speaker, and he had an excellent Power Point presentation. He repeated his statistics, and added that he met, literally, thousands of people enroute who had contact with cancer.  It seems to him that everyone is affected by cancer in some way.  He asked how many of us had direct or indirect experience with cancer, and almost everyone raised their hand. Periodically, during his talk, he showed individuals whom he had met, and told us their stories.  He spent six months planning the walk – as he said, “Not like the Forest Gump thing, just starting walking.”

Some of his walking days lasted 17 hours, and he walked up to 30 miles per day, especially as he got out West.  His backpack was 65 lbs.  He sometimes thinks of himself as a professional pedestrian.  People sometimes walked with him, for a mile, or for a couple of days. He even participated in a ‘Bachelor Auction’, meaning girls in the audience bid for him. He camped out about half the time, and people often took him in. His tent was 3 x 4 feet, domed, so he couldn’t stretch out.  He vividly remembers one night when something lumbered up to the tent, stuck its nose into the air vent, and sniffed.  Then it lumbered away – and no, he didn’t check to see what it was!

He stopped at many cancer centers as he went along, and found the patients inside to be inspirational.  He met one woman who had been hospitalized for 25 years, and she still had an upbeat attitude.  As he walked into Nebraska, a tipsy man met him and insisted that he should eat Turkey Fries. He did, but wasn’t told until afterward what they really were (he didn’t tell us, either).

He lost 42 lbs during his walk.  One dish that he encountered often were GSD’s – that is, Gas Station Delicacies, and the variety was wide.  He met a 17-year old high school girl who had lost her leg – but she was still dancing!  As he was traversing Wyoming, he noted how beautiful the scenery was – but also thought it might be more attractive if you were driving, rather than walking.  During his trek, 271 people stopped and offered him a ride, which he had to decline, of course.  34 police officers pulled him over, and 15 of them ID’ed him. Dogs chased him 11 times, and he claims he was flipped off only 5 times!  He became severely dehydrated more than once, and had to be rehydrated intravenously.

As he was crossing Nevada, nobody stopped to visit – they have a major prison, and that’s why he wore his bright yellow shirt.  He set Reno as his target, figuring if he could get there, he would make it all the way, and his four sisters each walked partway with him at this point.  He was challenged to ‘Jump out of a place for cancer research’ and turned it down.  But as he thought about it, he began to change his mind.  So he jumped, with a partner, (that’s called Tandem) from 13,000 feet.  His partner said Eric should be the one to pull the ripcord, and to do it at 5,500 feet.  Since he had a strap-on altimeter, and they were falling at a mere 120 miles an hour, he became fascinated as he watched the numbers – and finally remembered at 3,000 feet.   By questioning, he learned that two present members of WVRC have also jumped – HANK HEUER, and I think the other one was PP JOHN SINGLETON.  A week later he got to San Francisco, and at that point he had invited all the people he had met enroute, to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge with him.  A bunch showed up – a fitting climax to his trek. He was told that the closest beach was Baker Beach, so that’s where he went, learning enroute that it was a nude beach.  So his story is about people, and cancer – quite a tale, and it took place from April 14th, 2005 until Nov. 5th, 2005 – when he was 23 years old.

Words of Wisdom:
There is a wonderful mythical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life – happiness, freedom, and peace of mind – are always attained by giving them to someone else.. 

—YOE, Ernie Wolfe