Rotareminder for the Rotary Club of Kent
Meeting on September 9, 2025.
President Amanda welcomed the group by calling the meeting to order at ~12:15pm. Our patriotic song of the day was the National Anthem with David Dix (on piano). Dominique Bolenbacher (vocals) led the club in the singing of Let There be Peace on Earth, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance.
The Invocation for today’s meeting was offered by Roger Sidoti. Marc, Roger, and Bill were working tech, with Nithya handling photos and Brian handling Rotareminder duties.
There were no visiting Rotarians.
New Member Induction
Samantha Stephens, president of Schneller Corporation, nominated by past president, Kathy Myers, was inducted as the club’s newest member.
Visitors / Guests
David Dix introduced Linda Robertson and his spouse, Janet.
Kathy Myers introduced our newest inductee, Samantha Stephens.
Announcements
Kathy Myers extended invitations to all rotarians to the upcoming Coleman Health Services fundraising event – Changing Destinies 2025. The event will be next Thursday, September 18th at the Highfields Event Center in Hudson. Online registration information is located in the flyers distributed.
Dominique announced that the City of Kent is soliciting feedback on bicycling in Kent (https://www.monkeysurvey.com/r/BFC_2025).
Bill Childers, distributed flyers regarding volunteer needs for the Red Shield Food Pantry. Remaining dates for the year are Oct. 1st, Nov. 5th, and Dec. 3rd, Please contact Bill at 330.730.3458.
Jackie Smiegel announced the upcoming Gala for Open Arms Adoption on October 25th. Please see Jackie for more information.
President Amanda reminded rotarians about the upcoming social event Pints and Quarts at the Battleground restaurant on September 11th. On a separate note, Amanda encouraged rotarians to sign up for invocations, whose messages do not necessarily have to be rooted in prayer, but rather, any uplifting message.
Happy Bucks
Mary Beth expressed her profound pleasure about the Nebraska cornhuskers victory over the Akron Zips this past Saturday.
Kathy noted our newest member, Samantha, and that all the work going into Coleman major fundraising event will soon be over.
Bill Childers noted Todd Kamenash’s birthday and well wishes to our newest member, as well as our speakers for today.
Larry Lohman was happy about being placed on the selction committee for the new rotary zone director, and the fact that he and his spouse have listed their home for sale.
Jackie Smigel was happy not to be working in court so she could attend the luncheon.
John Flynn continues to amaze with his attendance at last week’s OSU game, sitting in C-Deck.
Rachel was happy for several friends in attendance.
Program
Carol Crimi/David Dix
They Had Us at Our First Papus – CoCoDa trip
This afternoon, two rotarians, David Dix and Carol Crimi, along with David’s spouse Janet, shared experiences regarding their recent trip to EL Salvador this past June to celebrate the completion of the most recent water project – Apolinario Serano. This was not the first water project our club has participated in, and most likely will not be the last.
With every story, it helps to have some background to clarify how these projects came to be. David, in true journalistic form, did his homework to piece together the following narrative…
The Central American country of El Salvador, is smaller than Massachusetts, with a population of seven million, most of them Mestizo, a blending of indigenous Amerindians mixed with Europeans, mostly Spanish.
El Salvador is beautiful. It has gorgeous tropical foliage. Its mountains are interspersed with volcanic activity. Its sandy beaches draw a growing tourist trade. Its major trading partner is the United States with a third of the population being impoverished, living on less than $5.50 per day – land peasants living in rural areas.
By contrast, a landed aristocracy, the so-called fourteen families of direct European lineage, have for more than two centuries wielded enormous influence, their huge landholdings producing coffee, El Salvador's major export. The fourteen dominate the country's 14 provinces or departments.
The country has had a violent history. Most recently, from 1979 to 1992, it suffered a disastrous civil war. The Reagan Administration, fearing communism, supported armed forces that fought guerilla insurgents, but also bystanders believed sympathetic to them. In the late 1980s, a commission led by a Massachusetts Congressman, the late Joseph Moakley, began traveling to El Salvador and investigated the use of American aid as well as the 1989 killing of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter. Moakley found they were murdered on orders of the Salvadoran Armed forces. His commission also found that that many of those killed in the war were bystanders. Moakley convinced members of Congress that the weapons they were sending to El Salvador to fight communism were mostly being used to murder or intimidate non-combatants, whom they believed sympathetic to the insurgents. His findings led to a reduction in American support and eventually a UN sponsored brokered peace in 1992.
A subsequent UN truth squad found upwards of 75,000 Salvadorans, mostly non-combatants, had been killed and 8,000 forcibly disappeared. Among the dead were Human Rights advocate Archbishop Oscar Romero, assassinated while saying mass, and four female American Catholic missionaries, two of them from the Cleveland area, raped and killed by Salvadoran armed forces, prompting many Salvadorans to flee. As many as two million ended up in the USA under special visa arrangements for refugees that Congressman Moakley facilitated.
With the UN brokered peace, El Salvador gained a Constitutional government that respected due process. However, gang activity much of it collaborating with gang activity in the USA, kept El Salvador a dangerous place. The election in 2019 of Nyib Bukele changed this. He declared a state of emergency and, suspending parts of the constitution, arrested thousands of suspected gang members imprisoning them in twenty-five large detention facilities without due process. He had reversed a ban on metals mining considered dangerous by environmentalists and was seeking the arrest of four declared innocent by a jury for a murder involving the metals mining issue. Despite his autocratic behavior, his suppression of the gangs has kept Bukele popular. He has encouraged tourism which, with El Salvador's gangs crushed, is booming and providing jobs.
Carol, Janet, and I were able to visit one tourist attraction, El Tazumal, a well-maintained archeological site of ancient pyramidal structures built when the Mayans were ascendent from 200 to 800 AD.
Our base was Suchitoto, a town of 25,000 in a mountainous area of the province of Cuscatlan, about an hour's drive from San Salvador, El Salvador's modern capital city. We were quartered in a former convent converted into a cultural center. Still recovering from the Civil War, when Suchitoto was mostly deserted, the city's streets are worn cobble stone. They are fronted by stucco buildings that recall elegant Spanish colonial times. (Janet shared with our club the nature of the title of today’s remarks. The three of them experienced the flavor of El Salvador’s national food – the papusa. A type of bread made with rice flour and often served with salsa. After one bite they were hooked…!)
We Rotarians were brought together as a team by CoCoDa or Companion Community Development Alternatives, a non-government U.S. based foundation, that arose to support people-to-people programs that improve lives and to avoid a repeat in which American arms are used against the Salvadoran people.
Our mission was to witness the dedication of a solar powered water pump project that will serve six villages and 1,200 people who have lacked access to easily available drinkable, fresh water. Rotary, many of them NE Ohio Rotary Clubs, teamed up with El Salvador's Santa Tecla Rotary Club to fund this project.
For the past two decades, rotary and CoCoDa have team-up to construct clean water projects for communities whose infrastructure was decimated by thirteen years of civial war. Much work remains to be done, however. If this story has touched you in some way and you would like to become involved, there is another project that is already being arranged for June of 2026.
Fellow rotarian, Larry Lohman delivered the club’s response.
Respectfully submitted,
Brian K Bialik
