May 30, 2008 Meeting

Pledge, Song & Invocation

President Helene Michel led the room full of members and guests in the Pledge of Allegiance. All were in good voice for a heartwarming verse of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," followed by Len Wilson's eloquent invocation in the true spirit of Rotary.

Guests & Visitors

Visiting Rotarians today were Richard Harrington from the Lawrence club, Judy Carlough from Nashua, and Nurur Rahman, president of the Chadstone/East Malvern club of district 9800 in Victoria, Australia. Also present were our scholarship recipients, John Baroni, Katherine Fionte, and Brittany Lee Hockman, along with their parents. The underage group included Robert Evans and Perrin Troiano.

Scholarship recipients Brittany Lee Hockman, Katherine Fionte and John Baroni.

Club Business

Andover Day - 5/30. Peter Cotch will be covering the Club booth. Our club sponsored some of the entertainment, including a presentation of Brundebar by Marie Stultz' Young Opera Company.

Citizens Who Care - to be held Wednesday evening, June 18 at 5:30 p.m. in Memorial Hall Library. Please plan to come to help honor this year's recipients. This event will take the place of the Friday meeting on June 20.

District Conference - Alan Michel and Bob Troiano have assembled a video of our activities to be shown. Donna-Lee Rubin will be making a presentation to the assembly about Rotaplast.

Ambassadorial Scholar - Ed Bride and his family have sponsored Francesco Liberatore this year. He will be graduating and returning to Italy. Ed will present him with a gift and cards of congratulation from the club.

Scholarship Committee - Helene thanked Peter Caruso, Paul Mercandetti and Paula Evans for their efforts in identifying the best recipients for this year's scholarships.

Letter from Cal Mutti - From Cal's recent letter it's obvious that our club is a hard act to follow . He said that while he has visited several clubs on the Cape, he has yet to find one with such a diverse cast of characters as ours, and therefore he has not yet transferred his membership to another club. He mentioned that he keeps very busy with his various pursuits, including gardening, bee keeping, and pumpkin farming. He promised to visit soon.

Andover Chamber of Commerce - Deedee O' Brien is being honored by the Andover Chamber at a breakfast gathering on June 5. We will have a table and there is still time to sign up. Contact Paul Brown if you want to attend.

Boy Scout Yankee Clipper Distinguished Service Award - Bill Buck is this year's recipient at a dinner to be held shortly. Contact Helene for details.

New Members

President Helene welcomed new members Gail Jackson-Blount from the United Way, sponsored by Len Wilson, and Cheryl Callahan from Enterprise Bank, who is sponsored by Peter Caruso. Each of the ladies was warmly welcomed and they seemed pleased to be able to join the ranks of our august group. Helene mentioned that a New Member Orientation will be held on the last Friday of next month.

Scholarship Awards

Peter Caruso said that the group of candidates was so well qualified this year that the committee had a difficult time in making their choices. He mentioned that they were all selected for their academic as well as their volunteer achievements. All students attend Andover High School. Peter thanked Paul Mercandetti for once again putting in many hours to assure that the right scholars were chosen.

The recipient of the Barbara Doran Scholarship this year is John Baroni. John will be attending Massachusetts Bay Community College. Among his volunteer activities was a trip with Andover Youth Services to New Orleans to work on the hurricane recovery effort.

Katherine Fionte will be enrolled at Simmons College to study nursing. Katie was instrumental in working with Susan Big to re-establish the Interact Club at Andover High. She also was part of a work group to aid in the Mississippi hurricane recovery.

Brittany Lee Hockman will be studing occupational therapy at University of New Hampshire. Since a very young age Brittany has been active in working with the Andover Senior Center, delivering Meals on Wheels, and currently serving as a friendly visitor.

Each of the students displayed an enthusiasm which made it apparent why they were chosen. Congratulations!

Vocational Speaker

This month's speaker chair, Past President Dave Sollars, presented our recent new member and today's vocational speaker, Helen Nicolopoulos, who works for Citibank and is a native of Greece.

Helen said that although she was raised in Athens, her family's roots are in the Delphi area, where young girls are trained to be good wives, and where most husbands are chosen for the girls by the age of 16-17. These men are typically older and established in business. Helen's father chose instead to have her educated in business school and also evenings in an American English class, both of which were very strict for girls. When her father decided she should go on for a bachelor's degree, Helen rebelled and said she wanted to marry for love a man of her choice.

So at the age of 18 Helen and her young husband came to the US. Her uncle sponsored them and they both got jobs in a dress factory. Their efforts to start a family were thwarted by several miscarriages. They decided to go back to Greece, where they stayed for a year, and where Helen gave birth to a baby boy.

When they returned to the US, Helen started her own travel business, which she ran until the 9/11 disaster. Helen is now employed at Citibank, a company she chose because of their reputation for volunteerism, which had always been a part of her background. Helen showed a video of Citibank workers throughout the world working on 1,000 separate events on a particular day. She said that Citibank made a commitment to help with the earthquake disaster in China and has raised 1.25M in matching funds. She thanked her manager for the opportunity to join our club, where she is happy to be able to continue her volunteer service, and where we are happy she is doing it here.

Raffle

The pot reward for the hidden joker stood at $216 today, but Ed Bride and Len Wilson each chose a 7 card and had to be satisfied to share the $10 consolation prize. Paul Brown insists there is a joker in there somewhere!

Club Flag Presentations

Our guest from Australia, Nurur Rahman, presented his lovely flag from his home club in Chadstone/East Malvern, and Donna-Lee Rubin brought one back from The Breakers in West Palm Beach, Florida. Donna-Lee also reported that she was asked to fill in for their missing guest speaker, she spoke of the Rotaplast mission, and returned with a sponsorship for 2 Rotaplast patients as well as the club flag.

Sergeant-at-Arms

With only minutes to spare, Peter Cotch made a heavy haul today with folks happy for all sorts of things. Bill Buck reported that a container with 20 pallets of books is on its way to Kenya; Mark Spencer gave congrats to Felipe on his graduation and scholarship winner John Barone; Rebecca Tang congratulated winner Brittany; Jim Sutton also for Felipe; Marie Stultz was wishing for no rain tomorrow for Andover Day; Susan Big congratulated the scholars and is celebrating her Mom's 91st birthday.

One of the scholar mothers, Maureen, gave a buck in thanks for the great work of the club; John Barone's father did the same;a number of other gave in congratulations to the scholars and the new members; Jack McSweeney was happy his daughter graduated from Villanova and has a job as a mechanical engineer; Dave Lindsay is anticipating the birth of his first grandchild while visiting his other daughter before she begins her new job.

Steve Druth was celebrating the victories of the Celtics; Gail and Cheryl both gave a buck celebrating their joining the club and the welcome they received; Howard is happy his son has graduated; Kerry Ellen Enright brought greetings for a makeup she did in Iceland and said to look for the American Red Cross booth at Andover Days. Guest Judy Carlough encouraged everyone to visit her club at the Nashua Country Club. All in all, it was a very happy and grateful and generous group today.