Visalia Breakfast Rotary - Visalia Breakfast Rotary News

Glenn Black worked hard to organize VBR's 2009 Rawhide social.

Larry Jones visits with other Rotarians and spouses during the

warm-ups.

Along with the baseball game, Rotarians also enjoyed some wine tasting (except, of course, Krista).

Gary, Paul and Glenn enjoying a beer.

VB Rotarians also were treated to an exclusive tour by the Park Manager for 15-20 minutes.

Here the tour of the stadium continues. Glenn Black stated that they toured throughout the entire stadium and into parts that very few people will ever see.

July 30th

Regular Club Meeting

Some of our newest Members receive their Blue Badges after completing the necessary requirements, such as being a greeter and attending another Rotary club's meeting. Shown here with the President are Paul O'Donnell, Cal Sisto, Brice Yocum, Josie Eivins and Kathryn Montejano.

Brice Yocum was inducted this morning into the Aviators Club,

call sign "UnderTow", due to his behavior while attending

Pepperdine University. He had accidently shoo'd away the

President of the college from some seats that he was saving.

Andre Edmonds was also inducted in the Aviators Club as "Igor", due to

being the assistant to a physician who made some interesting choices

while treating an injured Hell's Angels member.

Our Business of the Week, Pro P.T., was presented by Todd Martin. They have offices in Visalia and Tulare and handle all types of physical rehabilitation.

Daniel Lovik visited us today and discussed his plans with the Club. He is our outbound youth exchange student and will be leaving for Norway on August 8th. Good luck Daniel and have a great time.

Newer Member, Katherine Kawaguchi, does her craft talk and

let's the club get to know her a bit more. Katherine has a business

helping seniors modify their homes so that they can stay in those homes

longer while being less mobile. She and her husband, Bruce, have six children and have been in Visalia for almost two years.

Dennis Johnson finally gets his "Past President" badge. Great job Dennis!

Our speaker for the day, Terry Ommen, is considered by

many Visalians to be our greatest Tulare County historian.

Today he had some very interesting slides that were before (like 1900) and after (current) pictures of areas around Visalia.

Our new inbound youth exchange student, Alexandra ("Ally") Villacis from Equador, attends her first VBR meeting and poses here with her 3 host "dads" and President Matt.

July 23rd

Regular Club Meeting

On behalf of the Visalia Community Rotary Foundation, Dale Bruder presents Karen Cooper, Director of the Tulare County Family Services, with a check for $25,000.

Membership Chair, Todd Martin, inducts our newest member, Anthony Wicks. Anthony is Sales Associate with Compass Spine and assists surgeons with implant devices used in surgery. Welcome to the club Anthony!

Our business of the week, American Inc, is presented by our member and their CFO, Frank Saucedo. They handle commercial and residential air conditioning, both new installation and repair services.

Mike Clancy and Sharon Jansma were inducted into the Aviators club. Their call signs are now "Rainmaker" (long story that you may not want to hear) and "Iced Tea" (her employees think that she is cool and sweet), respectively.

New Member, Parag Sharma, gives his craft talk with a bit of humor and stories from the E.R. Thanks especially for the coke bottle in the rear x-ray Parag!

Our program today was Sheila Cerda, out outbound student last year who spent 12 months in the south of France. If you missed this presentation, you really missed a great speaker and a charming young lady.

July 16th

Regular VBR Meeting

One of our newest Members, Kareem Dada, handled the Rotary Minute. He read a list of famous people that you probably didn't realize were Rotarians. They included Jimmy Carter, Orville Wright, Sam Walton and Jerry Springer (just kidding).

Our newest Aviators Club member, Bruce Panttaja. Bruce has a hobby restoring old VW's, and also enjoys pulling extremely small trees in his front yard out with his 400hp diesel pickup. Our newest Aviators Club member, "V-Dub".

The next Aviators Club induction was Cindy Myers. Cindy once woke up quite late when she had a very important test to take. Slapped on clothes and was 1/2 way to Fresno before she figured out it wasn't 7:30am, but 7:30pm (she had only slept an hour or so). So, let's induct "AM/PM".

Little Gary won't be with us any longer because he's moving back with

his dad after living with Big Gary for the past two years. He was honorably inducted this morning as "Little Gary".

Roberta Stephens, CEO of Medical Billing Technologies, gives her craft talk to the club. Her business helps schools bill for clinical services and bring some of the federal dollars back her to help our community.

Among our HUGE crowd of Traveling Rotarians (about 12 of them), Larry Jones brought back President Matt a nice "gonja" hat from the island of Turks and Caicos, where he vacationed at Sandals.

Our program for this morning was the Chairman of the Tulare County Supervisors, Phil Cox. Phil gave a great presentation on what the Board and Tulare County are looking at for the upcoming budget in these times of economic stress.

July 9th

Regular VBR Meeting / New Member Induction

This morning we had President Matt's personal Secretaries, Emily (left) and Sarah join us for the meeting. Welcome Ladies!

Doug Udlock, standing in for Membership Chair Todd Martin, conducts the new member induction.

Let's all welcome our newest Members (left to right), Kareem Dada (owner Pita Kabob), Shelly Byrd (owner of Glick's Meat Market), and Jesse Casillas (Director of Information Systems @ Care Medical). Welcome and enjoy the club.

As part of the Aviators Club, President Matt has chosen to dress up like the Village People. And now some of Matt's issues begin to surface. Hold on people, you're in for a wild ride!

The newest member of the Aviators Club, Doc Cislowski, gets inducted with the call sign, "Two-Cakes". When Dave and his parents were imigrating to America from Italy at the age of 7, the first english words that Dave ever spoke were used to order "Two cakes please" on the ship, Christopher Columbus.

Another Aviators Club inductee, Frank Saucedo, describes a traffic incident which resulted in Frank getting drenced with urine, just before going into his multi-hour CPA exam in Los Angeles in 1996. Let's welcome our newest Aviators Club member, "Puddles".

After one year with his red badge, Paul O'Donnell, completes his craft talk with the club.

John Kelly, the principal at the new University Preparatory High School on the COS campus was our program today. The new high school is focused on preparing students for college life and a more aggressive cirriculum then a standard high school. Here Matt inducts him in as an honorary member of the Aviators Club with his own squadron mug and has him sign a book which we donate to community organizations.

July 3rd

Thank you from Norway!

Daniel Lovik, our 2009-10 Outbound student will

be heading to Norway in August. Here you see Daniel

raising money for his year by riding for $1/mile (he raised

about $2000).

Daniel writes to thank us for supporting him in the Rotary International Youth Exchange Program.

July 2nd

Regular VBR Meeting - 1st meeting of the Rotary Year

Incoming President, Matt Kneeland, conducts his first meeting and introduces "The Aviators Club". This is our standard annual dues/fines club, with one twist. Each member will be assigned a Call Sign, either according to a unique story about them or just something interesting that we can poke fun at.

Bob Dickey presents the Rotary Moment, a new tradition for the year where a different Rotarian each week will present a fond Rotary memory, talk about an interesting Rotary program, discuss some aspect of the history of Rotary, etc. This will be part of our initial meeting kick-off and hopefully will educate both new and older members on different aspects of Rotary.

Mike Rakes is inducted into The Aviators Club, new call sign, "Exterminator". Mike was ordered, as a student at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in 1978, to poison many flocks of birds that were harrassing the colleges farms. The event later turned up on the national news and in books about strange happenings around the world as most of those flocks were able to fly just long enough to get over the town of SLO before "mysteriously" dropping from the sky.

New Board Member, Parag Sharma, introduces another new aspect of Visalia Breakfast Rotary, the Business of the Week. We want to promote business between Rotarians to help eachother during these challenging times.

Llyod Hicks presents President Matt with a book and a special rock from his trip to Grand Canyon recently.

Mark Brackett, our Club Administration Board member, talks about upcoming socials with the Club. In particular, Mark is chair of the Visalia 4-Club Chili Cookoff and Softball Social on October 10th at the Rawhide's stadium at Recreation Park. Each club will be entering up to 3 chilis into the competition, and we will be having a Tri-Tip BBQ and slow-pitch softball tournament as well. More info to come.

Our Projects Board member, Brian Rouch, discusses the new local projects and a new international project with the Club. The local projects include a snow skiing mentor program and a bus trip for the COS Science students to the Jet Propulsion Laboratories in Pasadena. The international projects will be to help a Pakistan elementary school rebuild with hardware and supplies.

Meet the Board. Most of the Board was given a special pin today. We've got a great year planned and really hope to accomplish a ton this year, and have fun doing it!