August 4th, 2015
Dick Woltman, the top bidder in the banjo auction, was presented with the Alison Brown donated banjo by Club President Lora Fisher. He proceeded to demonstrate his budding skill with the banjo. |
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A Few Highlights from our Club Meeting:
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- Welcome and Introductions: President Lora Fisher
- Invocation: Chuck Dick read a prayer from a collection of Prayers for Food.
- Pledge: Orrin Gabsch
- Song: Ted Rutter: Kumbaya (we’re taking it back!)
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Visitors:
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Lora Fisher and Club Members welcome…
- Judy and Peter Corrente with Ed Mracek
- Jan BrunstingEvelyn Nelson, UCSD Medical Student, with Jane Reldan
- Ryan Kaziemeni with Bob Pecora
The Following are Florence Riford Grant Recipients:
Ann Backe, Leslie Harrington, Rick Schwartz, Jenny Mealov, Heath Fox, Sidd Vivek, Kara Smith, Cornelia Feye and Conrad Castro |
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Happy Bucks:
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| President Lora Fisher, having “shamelessly” self-promoted in a wonderful 10 Questions feature in The La Jolla Light, graciously made a generous donation to the club. |
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Florence Riford La Jolla Community Fund Grant
David Weston provided history on Florence Riford and the Florence Riford La Jolla Community Fund which was established in 1986 to assist worthwhile community charitable projects in La Jolla. This fund is advised by a board of directors appointed by the Rotary Club of La Jolla and the president of the La Jolla Town Council. A total of $475,008 has been granted out of this fund over the years. $23,000 has been granted this year to six non-profits serving the La Jolla community: |
- Florence Riford La Jolla Community Fund Grant Recipients:
- YMCA Summer Bridge Program: Presented to Sidd Vivek and Conrado Castro
- Partnership with Industries Program: Presented to Mark Berger and Amanda Yoshimura
- La Jolla YMCA: Kara Smith (for Sue Ball)
- La Jolla Historical Society: Heath Fox
- Atheneum: Cornelia Feye
- La Jolla Christmas Parade and Holiday Festival Foundation: Ann Kerr and Charles Hartford
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Speaker: Rick Schwartz
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Rick Schwartz, Zookeeper and Ambassador for the World Famous San Diego Zoo, shared wonderful factoids about the Zoo, which will be celebrating its 100th Anniversary in 2016!
- The genesis for the zoo was the small collection of animals left behind after the Panama-California Exposition of 1915-16.
- Dr. Harry Wegeforth heard the lions roar en route to his surgical practice and said to his brother “Why not a zoo in Balboa Park?”
- The City of San Diego accepted the concept of having a zoo, but declined to provide funding or management for the zoo. From the beginning the Zoo was always a community-supported, stand-alone Non-profit.
- Wegeforth bartered with other zoos for animals (we had plenty of sea lions to exchange!)
- Dr. Charles Schroeder, a veterinarian, was hired by the zoo, and in the 1960’s first referred to the zoo as the “World Famous San Diego Zoo”. The name stuck!
- In the 1920s, the zoo was the first to have open exhibitions of carnivores, recognizing how deep moats provided safe barriers between the animals and the visitors.
- Charles Schroeder first envisioned the Safari Park (originally called the Wild Animal Park), and continued to scope out the space in the San Pasqual Valley, and pitched opening it to the public, over the profound resistance of the Zoo Board of Directors.
- Ambassador Joan Embry brought the Zoo further fame when she appeared on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson
- Today the zoo’s conservation mission is carried out in 140 locations around the world!
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District Dinner at Cordiano Winery
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| Tuesday evening, several La Jolla Rotarians met for a lovely dinner in San Diego’s wine country.Overlooking vineyards, valleys, and rolling hills, the Cordiano Winery provided an elegant backdrop for District Governor Janice Kurth’s first event. She lived up to her promise of “No more boring district dinners!”Attendees included George & Kathleen Wahab, Jane Reldan, Laurnie Durisoe, Ken King, Charles & Karla Marsh, Lora Fisher, Bill Burch, and our Italian guest Federica Alemanno. We’ll let you know next time we have such a fun event! |
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From the Pages of
August 2015 Edition
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THE LOST GIRLS OF SOUTH SUDAN AND THE ROTARIAN WHO FOUND THEM
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The girls were alone. Their families were dead, or gone, or lost in the broken landscape of southern Sudan. They had nowhere to turn, and no one to turn to. Some lived in the market, others in the cemetery. When Cathy Groenendijk saw them, she couldn’t help herself. She offered them tea, then some food, then a place to sleep in her guesthouse.
“In the morning, we would sit together and talk about what had happened the night before,” Groenendijk remembers. “And what I heard I could not believe. I could not believe it.”
One girl’s father had died, and after the funeral, she never saw her mother again. She was living on the streets with some other kids when four men started chasing them. The other girls were faster. She fell behind and was caught and raped by all four men. Groenendijk knew a doctor who repaired the physical damage, saving her life.
Another three girls, ages eight, six, and one, lived with their mother, but they all slept in the open. Groenendijk helped them build a tarped shelter, but the hot sun ate it away. One night, a man snuck in and tried to assault one of the girls. After that, Groenendijk let them sleep on her veranda.
This was in 2006. A peace accord had been signed the year before, ending a 22-year civil war and paving the way for the independence of South Sudan. But the region was still broken in many ways. While the story of its “lost boys,” who traveled hundreds of miles on foot to reach safety during the war, is well known, little has been written or said about the girls who stayed behind, and who were just as lost.
Groenendijk was born in eastern Uganda, where her father grew coffee and bananas on the family farm. She had three brothers and seven sisters, so when she was three years old, she was sent to the capital, Kampala, to live with an aunt. After secondary school, she went on to study nursing.
“When I was in Kampala,” she says, “I used to take the food that was left from our kitchen in the training school and give it to the children who were without food. It was a very, very bad time under Idi Amin, and after.”
It was a time of war, suspicion, and fighting. Between 1971 and 1979, about half a million people died under Amin’s dictatorship. Another 300,000 died under Milton Obote before he was deposed in 1985.
Read More in the August 2015 Edition or Click Here
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