Pledge & Prayer: Pres. Joan Camire
Song: Bill McLaughlin
Brents Card Game Winner: Marty
Sergeants Report: Bob Antoniac
Raffle Winners: Mike Velgouse, Rick Beck and Bob Antoniac
Happy Bucks: Lots of contributions for the Thanksgiving Liberty Bank fund.
Announcements:
This Thursday from 4pm to 7pm there is a spaghetti dinner at Firemans Field to raise money for home heating. Rotarians will be there around 5:30 to support this fundraiser. Price is $10pp.
Bill O'Shaughnessy met with the Old Lyme Youth & Family Services offering the club's support through the Outreach Program.
The Old Saybrook Girls Soccer team is doing quite well making it to the semi-finals in conference play.
Students of the Month, Math
Westbrook High School: Principal Bob Hale introduced Harlan Toussaint. A winner last year for science, Harlan is an outstanding student and athlete playing varsity football and track. Harlan is interested in a career in some sort of engineering (to be determined).
Old Saybrook High School: Christopher Lee has the highest average in mathematics who plays lacrosse and is on the track team as well. Christopher is intererested in engineering.
Lyme-Old Lyme High School: Jake Turkowski is Wesleyen bound and will be a liberal arts major. Jake plays lacrosse and basketball.
RYLA Students:
Carroll Bowser talked about the popular Rotary program known as Rotary Youth Leadership Awards (RYLA) that teaches students leadership skills. Learn more about this by going to the section of our website under Club News. Today, 2 students from Old Saybrook who will be attending, joined us in our meeting. They are Joe Ferrentelli and Tenzin Wangchuk.
Program: Mike Velgouse
Mike started out by pointing out that none of us are members of Rotary International though we are members of the Rotary Club. Mike went over the requirements needed to be a member. The member must be a person of good character with a good business reputation. Its not written anywhere but in a general sense, if you have the power to hire and fire (or did when you were working), are a proprietor, business owner, or manager in a recognized business or profession, you are a candidate for Rotary. Retired people are eligible to join if they met that criteria before retirement.
Requirements to maintain membership include 50% attendance of meetings (club functions may count toward credit for meetings) and for a 1 hour meeting a minimum of 36 minutes in attendance. Meetings are once a week. If you miss 4 meetings in a row, your membership may be terminated. You may belong to another service club as long as it doesn't interfere with Rotary activities.There are 2 types of members, Active and Honorary. Classification rules have been relaxed to allow up to 5 people in the same classification to be in the club - it used to be that only 1 person per classification could belong to a given club leading to creative classifications. Rotary rules and regulations are formulated by the RI legislative counsel which meets every 3 years.
The Rule of 85 says that attendance requirements are waived if your age plus the number of years of Rotary membership is equal to or greater than 85. Mike went over the procedures for proposing and getting new members. It starts by inviting someone to a meeting so that they can see what the club is about first. There is a card to fill out detailing information on the applicant. The Board of Directors must approve the applicant and once thats done, the card goes back to the proposer who signs the card and a 10-day letter goes out to the membership.
If you miss a meeting, there are many opportunities available to make up which you can do up to 2 weeks before or up to 2 weeks after missing the meeting. You can check our district website for meeting times and locations for area clubs or you can attend a Rotary meeting just about anywhere in the world. There is even an online way to make up missed meetings. Club activities such as Meals on Wheels also qualify for make-ups. Click on the following link for make-up times and places in our district. http://www.rotary7980.org/Directory/clubMeeting.asp#1
The following are important dates to remember:
Dec. 15 OS Rotary Club holiday dinner meeting at the Waters Edge
Nov. 16 Board Meeting
Nov. 24 No meeting - Thanksgiving
Nov. 26 Wine & Beer Tasting & Silent Auction
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