Rotagram for Wednesday, December 10, 2008

(Show Pictures) The meeting started early today. A fleet of buses brought a group of partying elders to the Ebell Club on Laguna Road in Sunny Hills for our annual Rotary Seniors Christmas Party. This tradition has been going on longer than anyone now in the club remembers. It started out as a family Christmas party. Santa Claus would arrive to the sound of sleigh bells and hand out gifts to each child. Later, shut-ins and residents of convalescent and retirement homes were invited. As the club membership grew and the number of senior facilities increased, we had to organize separate parties for the seniors and the children because there simply wasn’t space enough for everyone, or time enough to get through all the individual gift distribution. In later years as the event grew even larger, we settled on providing identical gifts for all our senior attendees. (It appears that this year there will not be a family event.)

Mark McGee was the honcho for this year’s party but was prevented from attending due to a family emergency; Theresa Harvey and Jim Williams stepped in and brought everything off splendidly.

When your scribe arrived, Santa Claus—well impersonated by Jim McKamy—was there to greet us at the door. (No sleigh-bell accompaniment, alas!) Many of our guests had already been seated and Rotarians were bringing them plates of food from the buffet: a nice luncheon of roast chicken accompanied by rigatoni with tomato sauce, Caesar salad, and soft Italian bread sticks.

Joyce Capelle made the arrangements for the food and catering; Diane Masseth-Jones’s staff from the YWCA assisted with the serving. Bill Klinghoffer and Terri Grassi dispensed beverages.

Diane along with her husband, Tim Jones, and their daughter, Elizabeth, created the Christmas gift bags that were set out on the tables for each of our guests; Vimal Seth provided each guest with a bag of sugar-free chocolate chip cookies. Bob Jahncke & Dan Kiernan took photos of each guest upon arrival - and presented each with their own photo before they left.

A brass quartet, The Fullerton Tuba Euphonium Choir, lent an additional festive air by playing traditional Christmas carols, much to everyone’s delight. The players were Ken Berry, Tommy Bridges, Adam Robles, and Kenny Applegate. Club Membership Director, Bob Radde, was responsible for bringing them. It turns out that the leader and founder of the group, Ken Berry, is Bob’s son-in-law. Nice to have such talent in the family, isn’t it?

At some point in the festivities President Pat McKinley tried to call the group to order. Lacking a bell and finding the microphone not working, he had to resort to his crowd-control voice to lead us all in the pledge—and to summon Bill Mathy to come fix the sound system. Rev. Greg Hickman provided an inspiring invocation despite the lack of amplification.

The mike was turned on, the rest of the usual meeting procedures were dispensed with, and President Pat thanked all the members who had worked so hard to make the party a success. He then introduced two musical groups from Parks Junior High: a girls’ glee club led by Melissa Martinez and the bell choir under the direction of Karla Turner. The glee club led off with a whimsical and jazzy rendition of “Jingle Bells” and the bell choir played a number of classic Christmas numbers. Ms Turner told your reporter that she has been bringing her bell ringers to these Rotary Senior Parties for twenty-three years.

When the music was over and the food eaten our guests made their way to the buses and headed home. Zoot Velasco provided impromptu song-and-dance entertainment for some wheelchair-bound folks awaiting their turn to board their bus. A volunteer crew stayed behind and cleaned up. Thanks to all!

If you helped out and didn’t get mentioned, please send me an e-mail and I’ll send out a supplementary memorandum.

Editors Note from Bill Schenk: Today marks the final Rotagram written in regular rotation from Scribe Keith Mills.

I am often asked how I became the Chief Rotascribe and many of you have wondered how long your tour of duty might be as a Rotascribe.

Well, the answer lies in Kieth. He was responsible for recruiting me many years ago, when he was the editor of the Rotagram and it was a weekly published, off-set printed, peeled and stuck, Saturday delivered, organ of communication for the Fullerton Rotary Club.

In those days we had to do a lot of desk-top publishing and it seemed like no two computers used the same program. There were 40 or 50 man-hours necessary to get the Rotagram into the member's mailbox' by the following Saturday each week. As you can imagine it was a huge expense to publish the notes on a meeting that everybody attended anyway, and was ;largely viewed as junk mail.

Keith was instrumental in helping me stream-line the production and delivery of the Rotagram in it's present form. He had resigned from the Rotagram for a few years but when he was able he became a regular (par excellent) Scribe for the past few years.

Again, outside pressures push Keith to resign his regular Rotation, and his humor, attention to detail, and his commitment to the Rotagram will be missed.

Oh yes, The duration of your tour of duty on the Rotastaff depends on your capture date. Its kind of like the POW rule. First in-first out.

Congratulations Keith! You are an inspiratio to all of us for your spirit and creativity.