Meeting opening:President Randy Smith called the meeting to order. David Dix played our patriotic song, God Bless America. President Randy led the Pledge of Allegiance and Laing Kennedy offered the invocation.
Guests: David Sommers introduced Philip Lanier, Director of Marketing at DS Architects. Dave Myers introduced his guest, Ben Wolford of The Portager. Both guests are soon to be members.
Program: Speech Contest
President Randy noted that the usual order of business would be modified today. Announcements and the 100th anniversary moment will follow the speech contest. He then asked Olivia Pilon to introduce our program. Olivia thanked Pam Farr who helps with this contest annually in her role at Kent Roosevelt High School. She was unable to be with us today. Also, we had a third speaker for today’s contest, who had to cancel due to an emergency. Olivia introduced the three judges for today’s speeches. They are club members Kelly Tremaine, Sharon Sledzik, and Steve Smith. Olivia introduced today’s speakers and their speech topics. The first speaker was Kaylie Lowrey, a senior at Roosevelt, talking about the importance of a healthy lifestyle. Her speech topic is How Diet and Exercise Effect Your Body. Kaylie talked about the benefits of working out for thirty minutes every day and eating healthy food. She applied the Rotary Four Way Test to her topic.
The second speaker was Isabella Mineo who talked about social media. Her topic was Social Disconnection due to Social Media. She related the positives and negatives of using social media and urged people to connect in person.
The speakers gave very good speeches in spite of having to appear virtually using zoom.
At this point judges were given time to rate the speeches.
100th Anniversary Moment:
Jim Myers talked about events of the Rotary Club during 1940.
Announcements:
Stacy Richardson reported on a meeting of the auction committee this past week. The committee is interested in planning a celebration of our 100th anniversary along with a fundraising event sometime in the Fall of 2021. It may be a combination of in-person and virtual experience.
President Randy explained that we need to raise funds in order to participate in the district grant program this year. We need to have attained $40 per member given to The Rotary Foundation. We need about $1500 to be donated. An email was recently sent to Rotary members about this matter.
Carol Crimi reminded Rotarians that proposals for funding by the Kent Rotary Foundation are due no later than April 2nd for consideration at the Foundation’s April 13th meeting.
Todd Kamenash told us that we will be having a contest with the Stow-Munroe Falls Rotary Club during the month of April. We will be collecting food (cereal) in connection with the Ben Curtis Foundation for use in Birdie Bags. Stay tuned for more details.
Kelly Tremaine thanked all those who participated in the literacy project by submitting videos of books being read to share with young children in our schools. Kelly noted the technical challenges of doing the readings by video.
Program continuation:
Olivia Pilon thanked our speakers for the contest and said they both did a great job with challenging and interesting topics. The judges’ results were noted. The second -place winner was Isabella Mineo. The first- place winner was Kaylie Lowrey, who will represent Kent Rotary at the District contest to be held in April.
Responder:
Rachel Kerns thanked both speakers and noted how difficult it is to give speeches. It is even more challenging to do it via zoom. She said that both speakers are winners! We all unmuted so we could clap loudly for the two speakers.
Respectfully submitted,
Sue Hetrick
