Mount Clemens Rotary Club Spokesperson (Jan 24, 2019)

President Larry Neal rang the bell promptly at 12:15 p.m. Amanda Oparka led us in the Pledge. Scott Chabot led us in “The Four-Way Test.” Finally, Tom Davies delivered grace.

Today's lunch was similar to last week's lunch, so similar in fact, that I asked what it was around the table what it should be called. Glenn Burton said it was lemon chicken, precisely what Jeff Furest told me last week's meal was. Larry Neal (Oh yeah, I was sitting at the executive table) said it was some kind of chicken Parmesan or something like that. The breading on the chicken, indeed, had some Parmesan cheese in it. Otherwise, the salad and the beans were, unsurprisingly, also served last week. The only difference this week was the use of pasta in lieu of potatoes. In summary, it all tasted great. For dessert, there were cannollis, so that was a treat.

PRESIDENT TIME

Larry announced that the next board meeting would take place February 5; please let him know if you have any matters for the board to discuss.
It is official. We will be hosting a Youth Exchange student for the 2019-20 school year! Julie Huttenlocher has agreed to serve as the YE officer for our club.
The January 31 meeting (next week) will be a field trip to the Frederick V. Pankow Center.

GUESTS
Kelly Allen introduced our guests today. They were Korienna Cox, Lorna Cassey and Mashell Carissimi.

FLOWERS

Flower duty was handled by Art Niederkohr. The first flower went to birthday boy Ken Steele who was later sung to. Ryan Murphy bought a flower for Mary Ann Hosey

who just had her first grandson. Chuck Dib bought a flower for someone. Never did get that one. Glenn Burton bought a flower for Tom Davies because, in Glenn's opinion, Tom was the worst-dressed Rotarian.

SONGS
Music was led by Chuck Dib who selected

“Smile, Sing a Song” to start and then followed up with “R-O-T-A-R-Y.”

ANNOUNCEMENTS
Chuck Dib reminded everyone to buy their tickets for the fundraiser.

RECOGNITION
Tom Davies led recognition today and he zeroed in on Chuck Dib and hit him up for

$4.99 for a trip to Florida. Later it was discovered that some 50/50 tix that were left behind were

also Chuck's, so being the generous sort of Rotarian he is, he offered to round his fine up to $5. He wasn't the only traveler to get dinged. Karan Bates-Gasior paid another $4.99 for a trip to Belize and Mary Ann Hosey got hit up for a trip to Florida. While Mary Ann's fine for the trip was only $2.50, Tom employed the “upsell” technique hitting her for an additional $0.50 for a picture of her and her beau from 2007, and finally she was hit for the remaining $2 for spilling water all over her table.

Tom then fined Gary for playing “R-O-T-A-R-Y” too slow. Next up was Glenn Burton. Apparently Tom took offense to Glenn's calling him the worst-dressed Rotarian, so he hastily tagged Ken Steele with the official label of worst dressed on his way over to Glenn. He then fined Glenn for looking like a typical Grosse Pointer. Before leaving our table, he also

pegged Dave Meldrum for the advertising on the pullover he was wearing.

Finally he got Ryan Murphy as most-missed Rotarian and Bob Cannon because his State of the Township address is sold out.

SPEAKER PRESENTATION

Our scheduled speaker for this week canceled as was mentioned last week by Larry Neal. In lieu of having a speaker, and in large part, due to the recent passing of Mira Green, we watched a video of an interview of Mira by our own Bob Cannon from four years ago.

In her 92 years Mira lived a fascinating life. This interview was done to get that story out and to preserve the same for future generations. I will do my best to summarize from the notes I took.

Mira was born in Poland in 1926 in a small town just over the German border. (For purposes of this summary, Mira mentioned two towns often, but with her accent and not having the spelling I will not try to guess what the actual town names are. Suffice to say, one was closer to Germany than the other.) A town that she said was not too dissimilar to Mount Clemens with its mineral baths and tourism.

Mira had a pretty normal childhood with caring parents and an older brother who was about three years older than her. In 1939, she and her brother were vacationing on the Baltic Sea when a telegram from their mother came across requesting that they come home immediately. At their young age, they had no idea what was going on nor why so many people were also trying to leave. It was not easy, but they did make it to their home.

Shortly thereafter on 12/1/1939, Hitler invaded Poland. Her dad fearing for the safety of the children, sent both Mira and her brother to live with an aunt who lived in another Polish town further from the German border. The trip to this other town was not necessarily a good idea. Mira explained that the cars were lined up in a continuous traffic jam when all of the sudden German planes appeared. The planes then fired upon the cars with machine guns as they were idling away. She remembers everyone running from their cars and hiding in the forests until the planes were gone. They did make to their aunt's home, but were only there for a short period before returning to their home town.

The return was timely as shortly after they had arrived, the main bridge out of town was blown up by the Germans, which ultimately would have made that trip impossible otherwise. She remembers several horrifying details of this time of German Occupation. She recalls the tanks rolling into town and seeing said tanks firing upon people for no reason at all. Her family helped hide people in their basement.

The Germans immediately rounded up all of the VIPs in the area and executed half of them and the other half were jailed. Young men were put into labor camps and forced labor inside of Germany. They imposed a curfew from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and all food was rationed. The Gestapo was into everything and it wasn't long before they were right in Mira's house. They took over both the basement and the first floor of the home for their own purposes and allowed the family to live upstairs. An important aspect of this story which I did not pick up on until later is that Mira's mom was either German, or spoke German so fluently, she could easily pass for German.

These were tough times. Her family did not have the money necessary to escape as many others did. Her dad kept trying to emigrate to the U.S. through the embassy in Berlin and finally succeeded, but due to certain laws at the time, her mother had to stay behind.

After a difficult goodbye to her mom, she boarded a ship for a 10-day trip to America. She remembers everyone cheering when New York came into view and how grateful she and all of the other passengers were to be on American soil. Life without her mom was difficult. During the war they did get three messages from her through the Red Cross. All of the messages were assuring them that she was “OK.” With the $50 they had to their name, they purchased tickets to go to Detroit based on the job opportunities at the time. Her dad kept trying to get her mother to join them through the embassy, but shortly after they had arrived, relations between the U.S. and Germany further devolved to the point the embassy in Berlin was closed.

After the war ended, her dad and brother started proceedings to bring her mom over. On the other side of the pond, her mother one day decided to visit the U.S. embassy in Warsaw. Once there, she demanded citizenship to join her family and refused to leave until it happened.

This worked and at the age of 21. Mira finally had her mother back in her life. Shortly after this, she met a nice young man working in the library at Wayne State University, where she was attending classes. She said it did not take too long to figure out that they were made for each other and this is how Don and Mira Green met.

The 50/50 purse of $25 was won by birthday boy Ken Steele.