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With President Benjamin out of town visiting family, PP Diane Good opened today’s hybrid meeting at Hillel at UCLA.
Our greeter today was our newest member (but long-time Rotarian) Bob Simon. Aaron Donahue led the Pledge of Allegiance, and everyone recited the 4-way test! PP Ed Gauld donned a military officer’s hat and led us in today’s song: “The Air Force Song”.
PP Chris Gaynor gave the Thought of the Day. Chris shared that a few weeks ago, his nephew was married. His nephew’s bride and her family are from Lebanon.
This past week, the bride’s parents, who live in Beirut had to evacuate to Syria. Chris asked us to pray for her parents as well as everyone negatively impacted by the unrest in the Middle East and throughout the world.
Next, PP Steve Day introduced our guest, Cynthia McDermott. Cynthia, who recently retired, was Education Department Chair at Antioch University. Cynthia lives on the Westside and is investigating whether to make Rotary part of her life. Welcome Cynthia.
PP Diane gave a short recap of last Saturday’s Day of Peace Celebration in Long Beach, which drew over 600 participants, including PP Diane, PP Marsha Hunt and Janet Schwartz. The Day of Peace celebrated the United Nations International Day of Peace and Jane Goodall’s 90th birthday. Dr. Goodall is the world renown primatologist and was at the event.
PP Diane gave the following announcements:
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OPICA Art Show – Saturday, September 28th
- Humanitarian Trip to Maui – begins October 2nd
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Rotary Means Business event – October 10th from 5pm to 7pm. Location - Valley Relics Museum
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District 5280 Rotary Foundation Gala – Saturday, November 2nd – 12 noon – 4pm. Location - Sofi Stadium.
PP Steve reminded everyone who have yet to purchase opportunity tickets or event tickets that there is still time do so.
Today’s Speakers
PP Diane first called up our fellow WVRC Rotarian Nanci Cohen to give her craft talk.
Nanci was born in Los Angeles in 1947. She has two brothers. Her older brother is Richard, and her younger brother is Jon and they both live in Los Angeles. They are all graduates of Hamilton High School.
Nanci’s father, Nat Handel started an aerospace job shop in 1947 in downtown Los Angeles. It was called Standard Tool and Die. He sold his business in 1982 to the Nazarian family. As a side note, Nanci’s father did business with Mark Rogo‘s father Mort.
After selling his business, Nanci’s father asked her to come and work for him. Nanci handled his personal affairs and investments and provided bookkeeping services. Her older brother Richard, who is a commercial real estate developer, also asked Nanci to handle the bookkeeping for his business. She worked for both of them for almost 40 years.
Nanci’s mother Evelyn was a stay-at-home mom. She was a great mom and a wonderful tennis player.
Nanci was married to her husband Gil for over 50 years. Sadly, Gil passed away from leukemia seven years ago.
After Gil retired from Jason Natural Products, they traveled all over the world. Their favorite places were Israel and Africa. After retiring, Gil became a sheriff with the West Hollywood station. It was his lifelong boyhood dream.
Nanci has one married son, Matthew, who is age 56 and he is a lawyer/psychologist. Matthew started his career as a lawyer in mental health law but decided he’d rather be a psychologist so he went back to school to get his PhD in psychology. Ironically, his psychology practice specializes in lawyers who are unhappy being lawyers. Matthew and his wife have two sons ages, 11 and 12 and Nanci is very close Matthew’s family. Matthew’s family live in the valley
Nanci lives in Blair House, where Mark and Lynn Rogo also live. Mark, in fact, sold Nanci her unit. Nanci’s hobbies are ballroom, dancing, walking, swimming, jigsaw puzzles, crossword puzzles, and reading.
Thinking back on her life, Nanci is most proud of raising a great son with good values. She strongly believes that raising good children is the most important thing we can do for them and society. And now Matthew and his wife are raising their boys to have good values.
Nanci is a happy senior and as a thank you to the club, Nanci made a gift of $1,000 to The Rotary Foundation.
Thank you, Nanci!
Diane next called up PP Tom Barron.
Tom began by sharing some very good news about Sean McMillan’s niece Monroe. Monroe is the daughter of Jessica, who is Jill’s (Sean’s wife’s) sister. Monroe, who is only 4 years old, was diagnosed with leukemia earlier this year.
For the last several months, Monroe has been receiving treatment in the Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt University. Recently, Monroe received a bone marrow transplant from a family member and it was a success! She is cancer free! Thanks for passing on the wonderful news Tom.
Being the football fan he is, Tom thought it was a good time to roll out this year’s version of his Super Bowl Pool. Tom warmed up our interest by first conducting a Super Bowl Quiz. He asked 5 or 6 Super Bowl related questions. The grand prize was a bottle of wine, which was won by PP Chris Gaynor. Others, who came up with correct answers received a pad of paper for note-taking.
Next Tom, with assistance from Janet Schwartz, conducted the drawing for the pool. For $5 a pick, each person drew a name from an envelope that included the names of all 32 teams in the NFL. Whomever holds the name of the team who wins the Super Bowl this coming February, wins the bulk of the proceeds.
Check with Tom if you are interested in participating since, I believe a few team names are left.
Before adjourning today’s meeting, PP Diane reminded everyone that this coming week’s meeting and the meeting the week after will be at Westwood Transitional Village.
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