Prez Dan rang the meeting to order at 12:30 and immediately announced the sad passing of long time Rotarian and Past President Ray Ashcroft this past week-end. Services for Ray will be at Loma Vista this Saturday at 9:30 AM with a reception immediately following at the Ashcroft residence.

Prez Dan also reminded us that nominations are open for President-Elect to fill the vacancy for Jay Kremer who has resigned his position do to an injury he sustained while touring Europe. Marty Burbank has been nominated and will be elected by acclamation next week unless another name is put into nomination.

Homecoming Queen Cathy Gach lead the club in the pledge, and Pastor Greg Hickman gave the invocation before Susan Smith led the club in “Your Are My Sunshine” in memory of Ray Ashcroft, followed by a friendly rendition of “Smile”.

Many Announcements reminded us of Fullerton Rotary’s upcoming activities:

EZ-Up sun shades are needed for the October 22nd Jog-a-thon. Sponsors are still needed. If you sponsored last year, please consider a sponsorship for this year as well. Jim Williams will be happy to discuss sponsorship possibilities with all.

On October 14th Fullerton Rotary will participate in Distrct 5320 Leadership in Business awards. These awards are presented to business leaders who are not necessarily Rotarians and Nominations must be submitted to Prez Dan by this Friday.

November 2nd will be an evening fellowship meeting with a menu to be decided. The theme of this fellowship will be “Give Thanks to Rotary”. Admission will be one (or several) cans of food to be disbursed to the less fortunate. If something thinks to bring a can opener, our menu might be Pork & Beans, Tuna Fish, or possibly Sardines.

Rick Crane gave a spirited and funky invitation for all Rotarians to “Get down on it” and join him for a one time only show of none other than “Kool and the Gang” at the Olympic Auditorium next Thursday night. Reserve you seat on the bus by calling Rick.

Vern Andrews is reminding (begging) members to get their Community Investment requests in so his Foundation Committee can consider them for this Fall’s Awards.

Randy McFarland explained that due to the rehabilitation of Jay Kremer there is a vacancy on the Rotascribe Roster. It may take more than one Rotascribe to fill Jay’s shoes so please consider becoming a scribe. It’s actually very fun as well as being a very import function of the Club.

Judy Atwell had the winning ticket, but failed to choose the winning Owl for the big money.

Greg Hickman took his turn as Finemaster today and found many of his victims absent from the meeting. Present was Susan Smith who is celebrating an anniversary; Cathy Gach who celebrated her Rotary Birthday; and Bob Muschek who just returned from a month-long celebration of Doris’s birthday. To hear Bob tell it, he paid for birthday dinners every night as he celebrated across the county for Doris’ special day. His loving celebration was even mentioned on national radio by Paul Harvey!

John Phelps paid some bragging money for celebrating the births of twins to one of his grandsons. Griff Duncan was bragging about his large family coming home from all over the Western Hemisphere to celebrate their mother (Jan’s) birthday.

Dr. Joe Arnold introduced our guest speaker, Dr. Montesa Rahmatian, Assoc. Dean of Mahalo College of Economics, who spoke of the Abnormalities or our economy.

In a nutshell, the numbers don’t look good, but it could be worse. We are moving towards recovery and if all goes right we could fully recover by 2080! In 2015 our GNP was nearly $18 trillion (with 75% paid in entitlements!) and our National Debt was $20 trillion. For perspective a trillion is a $999,999 billion (plus one billion)! Because the pre-program meeting ran long there wasn’t time for the quiz that Dr. Rahmatian had planned on giving

Prez Dan ended the meeting with this thought for the day: Some of us have the great gift of building runways. Our present to others is to help them build runways so they can take off as well.