Asad Khan introduced today’s guest speaker, Scott Cavendish, a fictional character in no way related to Todd Kamenash.  The comedic talents of Todd Kamenash had the entire room in stitches while he presented a brief history of the Olympics from 1896 through 2020 (even though they were played in 2021).

 

The first modern Olympics were held in 1896 in Athens, Greece and featured only 9 sports with 43 events and about 280 athletes, all male. In contrast, the 2020 Olympics featured 33 sports and over 11,000 athletes competing in 339 events. The Olympics have only been cancelled six times including 1916 Berlin, 1940 Tokyo and 1944 London due to wars. 2020 is the first year the games have been postponed.

 

This year’s Olympics cost over $20 billion to put on. Did you know the medals aren’t really made out of the metal they represent? A gold medal is only 5% gold, plated over silver and a bronze medal is made of copper and zinc.

 

In 2020 San Marino became the smallest country to win a gold medal after waiting 61 years to win one. The largest country to have never won a medal is Bangladesh with over 150M people. There are 72 other countries that have participated and never won a medal. Only two continents have never hosted the Olympic Games, Africa and Antarctica.

 

In 2020, the games included 18 new events that added 474 more athletes. The oldest Olympian competing this year is a 66 year female equestrian from Australia. The youngest athlete this year is a 12 year old Syrian table tennis player. The youngest American participating in 2020 is 15 year old Katie Grimes in swimming.

 

Todd featured local stories of Ohio athletes and those with connections to Kent Rotarians, including Joe Schroeder, a member of the men’s USA rugby team who is related to Bill Childers.

 

We also learned that Dr. Spock won a gold medal in 1924 in Paris for crew. Harold Sakata (Oddjob in James Bond film Goldfinger) won a silver medal in 1948 for weightlifting. General Patton competed in the 1912 Stockholm Olympics coming in 5^th in pentathlon. Bob Anderson, the actor that played Darth Vader, competed as a British fencer in 1952.

 

Overall, team USA was successful this year with 66 women winning medals. Women made up 58% of the medals won by US athletes. The US has won the most medals in the last 7 consecutive games. The only sports in which the US has never won a medal are table tennis and handball. The US has hosted the Olympics 8 times.

Asad Khan introduced August 3, 2021 speaker George Joseph, Superintendent of Kent City Schools the past 7 years and a Kent Rotarian. He noted that that George was born in Pennsylvania but did his graduate work at Kent State University and spent his whole career in education. His presentation was titled Kent City Schools: Capital Improvement Projects Update.

 

In his opening comments, George Joseph thanked the community for their support in being able to provide significant upgrades to our school buildings and properties. He indicated that the breadth of the projects to be completed has been divided into two phases. Phase One is underway. Using pictures, he gave a brief overview of each project including:

Kent Free Library is a “school district library” serving the same area as Kent City Schools and governed by seven trustees appointed by the Board of Education of Kent. The area includes about 34,000 residents, but there are almost 36,000 card carrying members of KFL indicating that many outside our district value what our library has to offer. KFL is one of 251 public libraries in Ohio. Funding comes from the State of Ohio Public Library Fund, a local continuing tax levy, and by member’s fines and fees.

 

During the pandemic year of 2020, when KFL was completely closed for weeks and subsequently operated with many restrictions. Visitation, community events including story time for children, and items borrowed all dropped double digits as compared with the previous year. For example, in 2019, about 215,000 people visited the facility; in 2020, only 107,000 visited, a decrease of 49%.

 

The pandemic created three distinct phases of library operation so far:

March-April 2020 – Unknown

May-June 2020 – Curbside Service

June 2020-March 2021 – Library Express

 

During the Unknown phase, when we were figuring out how to navigate through a unique and confusing period of time, the facility was closed and staff were at home. All fines and fees were waived and no items were due to be returned. The 3D printers on site were used to produce face shields and many were donated locally. Zoom meetings were established and plans were made for virtual programming.

 

During the Curbside Express phase, a process was created to deliver contact-free services for patrons. Library patrons could request items in advance, pull into the parking lot, and get them delivered to their cars.

 

During the Library Express phase, limited in-building access was available with a “grab and go” approach. Returned items were quarantined.

 

Since that time, KFL has reduced restrictions as vaccinations have enabled a return to normalcy. Many of the successful virtual and self-serve programs will be retained as we go forward. Current plans are for normal operations to resume in the Fall.