Rotary Club of Santa Monica

"COLOR YOUR LIFE WITH ROTARY"

Rota-Monica

 

ISSUE NO. 34                                MARCH 23, 2001                      OUR 80th YEAR

http://RotaryClubofSantaMonica.org

 

A 5-PART PROGRAM

ABOUT A WEBSITE  

Chair Robert Segal

Chair Monika White

  Do you know that our club is a partner of the Center for Healthy Aging? Or that the two partners jointly have built up a website called Helpguide? 

Most of us are barely aware of these facts. If someone asks for details about the partnership or what it does, we might not be informative. But we would like to know more, because most of us are uneasily aware of eldercare problems near us. We wish we could offer knowledgeable advice. This Friday’s Rotary meeting will enable us to do so. 

Of our club’s 43 standing committees, the one concerned with “Healthy Aging/Elder Care” didn’t seem notable a few years ago. We weren’t sure what Rotary should do about the elderly. We didn’t know where to steer oldsters who needed help. Indeed, if we searched yellow pages of the phone book for organizational help, we might be puzzled. 

But then, in 1995, Monika White became president and CEO of the Center for Healthy Aging on Arizona Avenue, and also joined Rotary. She got acquainted with Rotarian Robert Segal, who headed his own firm in real estate ventures. Robert was seeking a way to make Rotary useful to families facing problems of mental health. 

There were organizations that could help, they found, but no detailed guide to which groups did what. Maybe they could compile a guide. Could the Rotary committee expand to become a committee on mental health as well as aging? It did. Robert became its chairman, and Monika the vice chair. They set two plain objectives for the committee: “1) Arrange for one speaker to our club each year; 2) Provide a resource of services and agencies and place on the internet.” 

The committee originally planned to publish a handbook, but by 1999 it realized that a website would cut costs and stay flexible for updating and improvements. After at least 50 meetings and hundreds of hours gathering information, the result is Helpguide. Helpguide is not only a directory of agencies, but also a guide to asking questions and analyzing which agencies can be most helpful. 

This Friday the committee explains Helpguide to the club. Instead of scheduling a speaker in the usual fashion, it has planned a five-part presentation, built around a double topic: “Ask Both What Helpguide Can Do For You, and What You Can Do For Helpguide.” Robert and Monika will each handle one part. Steve Litvack, a committee member, will also take the rostrum. So will Nancy Freedman, who is not only a committee member but also the 2001-2002 Rotary director who will supervise the committee for the Board.

COMING UP

 

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Saturday morning, March 24 – Regular  bimonthly inoculation of children at St. John’s Hospital.Rotary volunteers needed for two-hour stints. To volunteer, call Jim Reidy, 393-2512.

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Friday noon, March 30 – Inside big-league baseball  with Richard M. Brown, who was CEO of the Angels 1990-96 and is now attorney for various sports organizations.

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Friday noon, April 6 – Joyce Khoury presents prize-winning student essayists with their thoughts on our Four-Way Test.

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Friday, April 13 – DARK. No meeting. Good Friday.

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Friday, April 20 – Craft talks by two members.

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Friday, April 27 – Secretary’s Day. Invite your administrative assistant.

 

FIVE FINE FINES ON MARCH NINE

 

Congratulations Mike O’Hara on your admission into Samohi’s honorable Hall of Fame. Thank you for your service to the youth, the community and Rotary International. The next award you receive, please wear your Rotary pin, so Rotary can also join in your fame. Thanks for the $30 fine you received for not displaying your pin. 

Dick Lawrence (the head of “Encino Bank of Santa Monica”) was fined for touting the Piggy Bank loan program. Are these loans available for Rotary past presidents to pay their $100 fines? I hope so. Thank you Richard for your generosity. 

President John (our in-house Seminary drop-out) fined two of his (could have been) professional competitors for celebrating their church’s anniversaries. Presbyterian Rev. Bill Wood and Baptist Rev. Keith Magee celebrated 175 and 75 years respectively with fines matching the years. Thank you and congratulations Reverends on your service to your churches and the community. 

An old picture taken at St. Alban's Church in Westwood and a voice from the past showed up at our meeting. Our Bill Crookston and Jim Haljun were youngsters in the picture. Time has treated them well. Bill hasn’t changed much (same great smile with a slightly larger forehead), and Jim has improved tremendously with his ever-present pearly white smile. Which proves we don’t get older, we just get better. Jim, thanks for the $200, and Bill you are a very lucky guy. No fine.

 

-- Lionel Ruhman                                   

 

REMINDER 

In January, all Rotarians received a letter regarding attendance requirements and the risk of loss of membership due to continued absences. AGAIN, it must be stressed that four consecutive unexcused absences without proper makeup can result in expulsion from Rotary.

 

WHY FEW KIDS GET SICK NOW 

Many of us remember when sick kids and childhood deaths were part of the daily scene. Even after new vaccines protected children from smallpox, diphtheria and polio, other child-killers lurked among us. Every year five hundred youngsters died of measles. Twenty thousand fell victim to Haemophilus influenza Type B as recently as 1983.  

Such facts grated on our 1986 club president, Dr. Bob Fredricks, medical director of St. John’s Hospital. He knew that immunization could prevent common childhood diseases. School children were legally required to get shots against rubella, mumps, tetanus, and whooping cough as well as the ancient scourges mentioned above. But the law didn’t apply to pre-school children. Flocks of them still fell sick. 

With five children of his own, Bob Fredricks had a special place in his heart for children. He listed “Needs of Children” as a primary interest in our Rotary roster book. He kept wondering what could be done to protect youngsters in Santa Monica’s poorer districts. Medical teams couldn’t go house to house. 

In 1988 the Catholic Health Association of the U.S. made him board chairman. From this rostrum he spoke and wrote about the urgent need for early inoculations. In Santa Monica he talked with St. John’s people, L.A. county folks, Rotary people. They conceived a vision. 

They would offer free shots bimonthly for all children who would gather at a set place and time. County authorities would provide vaccines. But the families didn’t come. Apparently few knew, or understood, the plan. 

So Fredricks got Rotary to spread word through churches and businesses. A clinic was announced for the schoolyard of St. Anne’s Church, less imposing than the hospital. Rotarians set up furniture. A dozen families came to that first clinic in 1991. 

Now there are 80 to 100 children at each clinic, which has shifted to St. John’s cafeteria; families have lost dread of the hospital. Rotarians do the manual chores, helping the volunteer nurses and physicians. Together they have immunized two thousand children in the past decade. 

The idea has spread. The Red Cross now stages a Kids Care Fair to give shots at 29 locations around Southern California. Nationwide, the Centers for Disease Control report that four out of every five eligible toddlers got five of the six recommended vaccinations last year. And Bob Fredricks doesn’t worry so much.

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