Meeting Recap - April 14, 2015

Margaret was warmly welcomed back after a couple of weeks away.

 

Dana's guest today was her daughter-in-law, Janet Ampe. She was present to invite us to the Rogers Rotary Foundation "Big Cup" golf tournament. Details may be found at: http://rogersrotary.com/golf-tournament.  While Janet was here she also offered an opportunity to join her in this year's "Moving Day Twin Cities" walk/run for parkinson's disease.  Janet recently underwent successful deep brain stimulation surgery which has enabled her to walk in the event this year.  For more information, click here.

 

Gold Plate Dinner News: 

- Final GPD planning meeting is Tuesday, April 21st, 11AM at CU companies.  All GPD committee chairs should attend and all interested Rotarians are welcome.

- Please bring a bottle of wine or six-pack of beer on Tuesday, April 21st, to donate for a new fundraising effort at the GPD.  Val will be collecting your donations.

- Please get your silent auction donations to Cindy Carlson or Mary Stewart ASAP so they can have everything ready for the gala.

- Bev reminds us that that there are still 14 tickets left to be sold, so let's get it done!

 

Val needs one more volunteer to help her staff our Rotary booth at the New Brighton Town Hall Meeting from 8AM to Noon on Saturday, May 2nd.  Please call her if you can help.

 

Margaret read thank you's from District 5960 for our continuing support of Polio Plus, and from Ralph Reeder Food Shelf for the 163 pounds of food collected at the Easter Egg Hunt.

 

The Board will meet at 11AM on April 28th.

 

Mark reported that his mother passed away on Easter, but praised Benedictine Health Center for the compassionate care that she received during her stay there.

 

Our Speaker today was Eric Nelson.  Eric gave his long-awaited classification talk and here are the highlights.  Eric grew up as a "Rice Street Boy" on the East Side of St. Paul.  School was all parochial until 8th grade, but high school was at Tartan H.S.  Eric worked full time evenings to pay his own way through college, graduating from the UofM in 4 years with two degrees and no debt!  He got his graduate degree from St Mary's University of Minnesota.  He met his wife Christine (Chris) in high school but she wisely waited to show any interest until college had matured him a bit. The light of Eric's life is his daughter, Julia. Eric's first job was in the basement of the Tin Cups bar, trimming frozen chickens and he also worked at Rainbow Foods while in college.  His first education job was teaching at Henry Sibley H.S. but he soon got an assistant principal job at Edina H.S., where he worked for 12 years.  When the Irondale principal job opened up, Eric jumped at the chance to learn from 621 Superintendent, Dan Hoverman and to continue the great work started by Colleen Wambach and Scott Gengler at Irondale.  Eric loves lists and presented his list of loves, summarized here:

1.  The Desert

2.  Golf

3.  Arsenal Football Club (Soccer)

4.  Italy

5.  WWII Documentaries

6.  The Gophers

7.  Netflix

8.  Music (all kinds)

9.  The Godfather I and II

10. And of course, Countdowns and Lists

Eric and Margaret are pictured below.