Welcome to another issue of the Beacon! Discover the upcoming speakers, where we meet, and events where you can serve our community and the world.
President Ron's Briefing
Congratulations to the Four Way Test Essay winners who were all from the Golden Valley Interact Club. The First-place winner receiving an amount of $400 was Abigail Ortega; in Second-place receiving $300 was Yasmin Hidalgo, and in Third-place receiving $100 was Amy Mayorga.
A big thank you to all who participated in the San Miguel Grove cleanup. It was a successful cleanup and the park is looking cleaner because of their efforts.
Please set aside Saturday May 4th from 8am to noon for food packaging at Jim Burke Ford on Oak Street. We will teaming with the other clubs much the same way we did last year.
Thousand Flags is just around the corner and we need all the help we can get. So make sure you get with either Becky Brooks or Jackie Maxwell to find out what your assignment is.
A large part of our involvement in Rotary contributes to youth mentoring in Bakersfield and as our Breakfast Rotary continues to move onward and upward in sponsoring Interact Clubs at Foothill, Independence and Golden Valley High we can see great things happening on those campuses. If you were not at this Wednesday’s meeting we were treated with a sample of high school Interactor’s at Work for Golden Valley High School. More about this in just a moment…
It is of no coincidence that Dan Johnson performed Tony Orlando and Dawn’s 70’s favorite “Knock Three Times”. What we did not know was, and if I understood this correctly, Dr. Joe Nunez who was celebrated for celebrating his birthday, performs an unusually remarkable resembling rendition of Tony’s songs. Very impressive Dr. Joe! Is Dawn at your office? (Photo is Song Meister Dan getting “Squirrely with the Squirrels” feeding nuts on the golf course.)
Growth of Breakfast Rotary is important for so many reasons. It is a special day for not only the person being inducted, but for all of us. With great pride we had the honor of inducting new member David Perkins. David, and you will see, is a truly standup guy. David is an active participant with a number of local organizations. Trust me, I have seen the man at work and I know what he is bringing, and what he will apply towards making our club even better.
David is the publisher to a number of local neighborhood magazines which promote Bakersfield in a positive light. Some of David’s magazines can be regularly seen within the Rio Bravo and Seven Oaks neighborhoods. By the way, this guy’s thinking ahead, he has already penned in our incoming Pres. Cheryl Scott as the cover girl for his next month’s publications. I would have picked Pres. Ron Nelms, but oh well.
Welcome David!
Golden Valley High School Interactors
Rotary 4 Way Test Winners
Golden Valley High School
Amazing Students!
Okay, back to our guests and high school Interact stuff. We had not one, but two separate sets of Golden Valley students present. One group was our Interactor’s who participated in the Annual 4-Way Test Scholarship Competition. With Rotarian Andrew Ozanich as our Youth Services Director, Andrew introduced three contestants each of whom read their very personal applications of our Rotary 4-Way Test.
You know, what I like so much about the 4-Way Test is that it may be applied to almost all situations to achieve outcomes that we would never had thought of, or even realized, if we had not applied the principles.
As each Golden Valley Interact student read their essays, they spoke of challenges, sacrifices, truth, humility, and critical decision-making that they may have not achieved if it were not for our Rotary 4-Way Test. We want to congratulate all of these future leaders for the time spent, and application of the principals. Each student won monetary scholarships with the grand prize of $400 going to 1st placeAbigail Ortega. Way to Go!!!
Featured Speaker - Lori Malkin, JJ's Legacy
Our featured speaker was former Rotarian Lori Malkin. As she said, we know her story involving the loss of her dear son Jeff several years ago. Since Jeff’s passing Lori has constructed and brought to Kern County’s attention the need for awareness and participation in organ donation. Yes, this is a difficult topic Rotary membership, but how many of us have ever heard or experienced someone near to us who was in need of a gift that is for the purpose of survival? Wednesday morning I learned more about organ donation than I had ever known. How about you?
Medical advances have enabled us to perform lifesaving and life changing procedures that would have been unthinkable in the past. Lori has created a number of programs such as JJ’s Legacy to pay for expenses related to such medical procedures, but perhaps you have not heard that Lori has worked her way into even high schools to bring awareness to students to become registered as donors through DMV.
Now this is where Golden Valley High shines again. Lori brought with her two courageous young ladies from the school who have taken on the challenge of promoting the DMV driver license “Got the Dot Program” to other students on their campus. Personally, I think the girl’s move was pretty gutsy given that their parents were originally skeptical about them participating. The girls even made a promotional video on their own to share with other students. Awesome energy!
We too, can participate in the Pink Dot Program by simply going on line to JJ’s Legacy. There are directions to “link up” with DMV right from Lori’s page to sign up. Now ain’t that cool.
Hey all, this Saturday, April 6th at 8am we assembled at The Grove at San Miguel as a part of the Great American Clean-up. You know planted and adopted this park so we also are the “un-official” park maintenance team for the park. Seven Rotarians, three spouses, ten Golden Valley High Interactors and their advisor Mrs. Yama, three City Park employees and two "locals" cleaned the park and the commemorative plaques. All this work is making an impact and are helping to move it toward a nice place to visit.
You know I always feel so good after spending time with Rotarians on a Saturday morning being productive. More park photos are below.
That Queen Jackie, Jackie, Jackie, she gets all the attention around here. Well not really, but she walked away with $60 bucks from the opportunity drawing.
Knock Three Times”. What we did not know was, and if I understood this correctly, Dr. Joe Nunez who was celebrated for celebrating his birthday, performs an unusually remarkable resembling rendition of Tony’s songs. Very impressive Dr. Joe! Is Dawn at your office? (Photo is Song Meister Dan getting “Squirrely with the Squirrels” feeding nuts on the golf course.)
making our club even better.
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