Rotary Log for Meeting of May 18, 2017
By Jon Flagg
Photos by Tube Loch
Wow! At long last, we had a beautiful, warm and most importantly, sunny day for our meeting. And what a meeting it was!
A huge, huge thank you to Waterstone for their $5000 sponsorship of our golf tournament. What a great company!
Happy birthday to Basil who is celebrating 40 years in our club! And he has never, ever slowed down. Here's to another 40 years Basil!
More Thank you’s.
Thank you to Nancy Clayburgh and Nancy Notis for their recent spearheading of the junior high beautification project. Thank you also to Joanie Dickinson for all the hard work she does with the Rotoact students. But this time particular thank-you’s to Joanie for leading the recent Wallis Sands Beach cleanup. And another big thank you to Jamie DeStefano for all her Rotary website work. It looks great! While we are on "thank you's," we were actually thanked by Heidi Chace of Friends in Action. The huge load of clothes we brought to the meeting two weeks ago will be sold at a store in Durham. The proceeds will be used to fund Friends In Action social programs.
Please note that the Vocational Awards deadline for submissions is this Thursday, 25 May.
The program.
We do what we do all year long so that our club can give away a lot of money. That cash goes to many great causes. One of the best is the scholarship program where, this year, we donated $40,000! Well done club! Each of the recipients got $2,900. Thank you also to the Shanley and Genimatas families for generous donations which help sponsor scholarships. Thank you also to Cindy Shanley and her committee for their tireless efforts to select the scholarship recipients. It is impossible to capture all of the highlights from last week’s program. Indeed, the entire program was a highlight. Here are just a few snippets:
Nick Beal started saving money when he was five years old. He is now going to have enough to go to the University of Vermont… Jacey Chavez, described as "a man of character," will study architecture at Keene State … Benjamin Costa was the only one to be interviewed via Skype from Alaska. He’ll be studying at Leslie University next fall... Clark University welcomes Michael Ippolito, PHS 2017 class president. He plans to continue the "commitment to others" that he had at Portsmouth.
Courtney L'Abbe will attend the University of San Francisco. The PHS tennis team will surely this year's MVP… San Francisco also welcomes Lilly Layman, who is described as a "hard worker." She will study graphic design at USF.
Ella McGrail, Portsmouth's first student poet laureate, attends Bard College in the fall… Two students will go to the University of New Hampshire. They are Brianna Mastro, a student mentor at Portsmouth, and William Mauer, a former Eagle Scout. Mauer seems to work full time while somehow doing his Boy Scout commitments and studies and sports.
Emmanuel College will be the home for Molly Mickela. She is known as a "serious and hard-working honors student"… Hannah Patch is the only Berwick Academy scholarship recipient and had a full scholarship there. She will attend the University of New Haven.
The committee had faith in Faith Poirier. As a result, she receives a $2900 scholarship to study Special Education at Lyndon State College… One of this author's Little League players from many years back, Nate Rand, is going to Bridgewater State University. Nate will pursue architectural engineering.
Last, but certainly not least with likely the most unique circumstances for any of the kids, was Ellen Blezinsky. Ellen is one of those "undocumented" individuals that we hear so much about in the news. As a result, she cannot get student loans. The Rotary scholarship means the difference between going to college or not. Ellen said that she refuses to allow prejudice against foreigners and women to stop her! You go Ellen!
Congratulations to all! President James closed with probably the funniest speech I have ever heard at Rotary. I cannot do it justice, so I am not going to try. Ask anyone who was there!
The meeting ended on a really cool note: Ellen Blezinsky won the raffle! Pretty cool.
Respectfully submitted, Jon Flagg
