Visalia Breakfast Rotary - Visalia Breakfast Rotary News

District 5230's District Governor, Bob Eurich and his wife Sharryle visited the club today during his annual "tour" of all of the clubs in the District.

DG Bob Eurich welcomes Rotary International's newest member, Renee Lauck, as a new member of Visalia Breakfast Rotary. Welcome Renee!

DG Bob also helped induct our Honorary Member, Tom Johnson, to VBR. Tom has recently finished working for Governor Schwarzenegger as the Director of Veterans Affairs. Tom has had a long and successful career with Kaweah Delta Hospital and has been one of Visalia's most influencial citizens for the past quarter century. Welcome Tom!

Mark Brackett gets inducted into the Aviators Club this morning. Mark fell off of his horse while riding with a rough group of cowboys, hence the call sign, "Eject".

Security First Alarm King was our Business of the Week today. Rob Shahan presented their services and the history of the company that he and his wife, Sabrina, started about a decade ago. They not only do home and commercial alarms, they also have a full home entertainment installation division of their company.

Kevin Daniel is recognized by the District Governor with a Pilots Pin. For those of you who do not know, Kevin works very hard for the club, mostly behind the scenes and without needing any attention, keeping our accounting in order. He also has volunteered to handle the accounting annually for the Golf Fundraiser and the Chili Cookoff. If you see Kevin, please thank him for all of the work that he does for the club.

President Matt gives Bob and Sharryle the gift from the club, two wheelchairs donated in their name which will be distributed by Rotarians in 2010. During Bob's presentation to the club, he told the story about when he "became" a Rotarian, and that was during a wheelchair donation program outside of Mexico City.

October 28th

Board Meeting with District Governor Bob Eurich

District Governor Bob Eurich enjoys some food and a quick social after our special board meeting at the President's home. Sharon Jansma joined him as Glenn Black and Bruce Panttaja look on.

Board members Brian Rouch and Dennis Johnson visit with Assistant District Governor, William Martin, after the board meeting.

Board members Mark Brackett, Kevin McCusker, Todd Martin and Kevin Daniel have some food and refreshments.

October 22nd

Regular Club Meeting

Mark Brackett, Dru Quesnoy and Reggie Johnson award the winners from the Chili Cookoff and Softball Challenge. VBR won the softball and both "Peoples Choice" awards for the Chili. Great job to Greg Kirkpatrick and the team of Kneeland/Crites for some great chili. A big thanks to Reggie, Dru and Mark for heading up the Cookoff committee.

Sam Romero was our business of the week. Sam has a real estate firm that specialized in investments and appraisals.

Nate Ide was inducted to the Aviators Club as "Prince Nate". His great-great grandfather was the President of the Bear Flag Republic, the original state of California, for about 29 days in the mid-1800's.

Lloyd Hicks was also inducted into the Aviators Club. During a 49ers game a few years back, Lloyd had wondered down onto the sidelines and was mistaken to be Michael Young's father by the owner of the St. Louis Rams.

Our program for the week, the V-Town Leaders youth leadership training program operated by C-SET for students from seventh grade through high school to engage teens actively in civic matters.

October 16th

10th Annual Golf Tournament and Crab Feed

Dru, Anthony and Tom help set up the event. This was the first year that we had fog during the tournament and the weather really proved to be very nice this day.

Working fast and furious and the Golfer Registration Booth, Kevin Daniel and George Crites got all 140 golfers registered and sold the new raffle tickets.

We offered Bob some valium several times throughout the day, but he refused. Seriously though, our chair of the fundraiser this year, Bob Dickey worked very hard for the club. He deserves a pat on the back for a great event.

As you can see, we had some very serious teams show up this year and the competition was fierce. Our annual fundraiser has become Visalia's biggest profit producing golf tournament.

Crab for three, you say? Harold and Krista barely gave me time to shoot this shot before their heads went back down into the crab. By the way, they are do any day now!

Ed and Holly also enjoyed the crowd and the crab. It's nice to see a past President of the club able to sit back and just enjoy the event.

This year we brought in a professional auction service that added quite a few interesting items to the event.

October 15th

Regular Club Meeting

Terese Lane gave her Craft Talk to the Club today. Terese has a very colorful past and is currently in eduction at Redwood High School.

Gary Amon presented our Business of the Week, Central Valley Business Forms. They print pretty much everything and are one of Visalia largest printing companies.

Russ Lebo was inducted to the Aviators Club today, but we really can't tell you why.

Kevin McCusker tells the club the story about traveling to Africa with Rotary's exchange program. Unfortunately, he was bitten by a mosquito and was infected with Malaria.

These two young ladies presented our program for the week, Cutler-Orosi Digital Connectors. It is a local group that helps indivuals obtain computers and the internet service and also trains them on how to use the equipment and software.

October 10th

Chili Cookoff and Softball Challenge @ Rawhide Stadium

The six Rotary Clubs from Visalia and Tulare gathered on October 9th to hold our first Chili Cookoff and Softball Challenge. We had about 130 participants and attendees that enjoyed approximately 10 different chilis and some great fellowship.

A People's Choice Award winning chili, Greg Kirkpatrick's family worked the crowd harder than anyone else. Notice Greg in the back, crazy man!

Here we've got the Visalia Sunset Rotary Club's chili booth, a very strong contender.

The "Downtown" Club had a very special "guest host" at their booth. They were one of the ultimate "Judges Choice" winner for traditional chili.

The weather was perfect and you can see that Jim and Dale are enjoying themselves and and an ice cold beer this afternoon. Jim was later flattened by one of his teamates on the softball diamond!

Bruce Panttaja was one of our big hitters for the day, quite a swing on that guy. VBR was the ultimate winner in the Softball Tournament.

October 8th

Regular VBR Meeting

Cindy Myers was our Business of the Week and told the club about her business, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney.

Todd Martin tells the story about one of his first dates with his wife, Joy. While cycling together, Todd thought that it would be cute to touch her handlebars, which immediately sent her into a panic and resulted in years of physical therapy. So romantic that we named him "Casanova".

Glenn Black also got inducted today as "Dirty Harry" after chasing down some purse snatchers and pretending to have a gun with him.

Traveling Rotarians! Marty Prah just got back from his honeymoon in Italy with his new bride, Cindy. They traveled throughout Italy for almost a month and brought back some great gifts for our Rotary kids and for the President as well.

Larry Jones introduces our program for the week, Visalia Unified School District's Superindentent, Stan Carrizosa. Stan gave us an update on the District's budget challenges within these tough economic times.

October 1st

Regular VBR Meeting

We are going to have a very busy October. Here, Mark Brackett gives the Club all of the details of the upcoming Chili Cook Off and Softball Challenge at the Rawhide stadium.

Bob Dickey talks to the Club about our 10th Annual Fundraiser, which is coming up October 16th. Bob and his committee have made a ton of changes to the fundraiser, all of which appear to make this the best ever. We still need sponsors, golfer, auction items and crab eaters.

Dru Quesnoy is our point person for Sponsorships for this year's fundraiser.

One of our newest Members, Jesse Casillas, is inducted by President Matt into the Aviators Club. When he was in 6th grade, he inadvertently drove a car through his neighbor's kitchen, hence the call sign "Drive-Thru".

Marv was also inducted into the Aviators Club, but apparently, under a false pretense. Marv had concocted a story which he passed on to our President that he has six toes on each foot......totally false as it turns out. But, he did receive the call sign "Paddles".

Our speaker for the day was Scott Barker, author of the History of Yokohl Valley. Scott gave us some great historical insight into the valley and it's people.