Member Birthdays

 

Today's "Member Minute" came courtesy of John Suzukida.  John was born in Evanston, Illinois and graduated from the University of Illinois in Mechanical Engineering.  He worked for more than 20 years for Trane, which ultimately transferred him to the Twin Cities.  For the past 19 years he has worked as an independent consultant but has gradually been scaling back and is currently mostly retired.  In addition to his many years with our Rotary Club, John has become an active volunteer with a number of other organizations that he and his wife Lori support.  They are the parents of 3 adult children and have several grandchildren they are totally smitten with.  Those grandchildren and their parents will soon be relocating from Boston to the Twin Cities to the delight of Grandma and Grandpa!

 

Today's program was on the subject of "Adverse Childhood Experience" (ACE).  We viewed a video in which Dr. Vincent Felitti spoke about the very significant impact that childhood trauma, or ACE, has on individuals throughout their lives.  Research has shown that depression, suicide, promiscuity and all number of adult troubles can be traced back to childhood trauma, as ACE scores have a very high correlation with these problems, making it our nation's most basic health issue.  So what can be done?  Felitti argues that medical professionals should move away from  the current "symptom reactive" approach to treating patients and add more research into patients' family background to understand possible underlying trauma.  

Kent Peterson provided today's "Member Minute".  We were introduced to his diverse family via PowerPoint pictures - great kids and grandkids doing great things!  Kent grew up in Illinois and attended Pharmacy School at the University of Iowa.  He later came to Minnesota for his Masters Degree in Public Health and then joined the MN Department of Health where he worked for 28 years.   In his "second act", he returned to his pharmacy background, working 13 years for Cub Pharmacy before retiring.  Kent's primary interests outside of family are orchids, travel and Rotary!

 

Today's speaker was Martha Rush, an award-winning teacher in Economics at Mounds View HS.  She began her career as a newspaper journalist focused on education topics, which led her to ultimately decide to go back to school to become certified in teaching.  Lucky for us, she landed at MVHS, and began to put her teaching theories to work.  She quickly saw success with her approach of re-thinking the way people commonly teach challenging subjects such as Economics.  Her re-imagining led her to write and publish her book "Beat Boredom", which is founded on the principle of engaging students rather than lecturing them.  She has become a consultant on this topic to other schools and teacher groups looking to improve teaching methods.   Moving to a more engaging style can be very uncomfortable for teachers as it feels like giving up control of the classroom.  But Martha is a firm believer that only a very few students learn well under a traditional lecture approach.  She believes the following approaches to be far superior:  Storytelling, Discussion/Debate, Simulation, Problem Solving, Competition and Involvement in authentic tasks.  

Jerry Peterson provided today's "Member Minute".  He graduated in engineering from the University of MN, then was drafted and in 1973 ended up stationed off the coast of Africa. Jerry has been a member of our club for 15 years and our Treasurer for much of that time.  He enjoys the community involvement opportunities our club provides.  Jerry worked in power generation before his retirement.  He was married for 41 years before losing his wife to Huntington's Disease four years ago.  

 

Next we heard from Lutheran Pastor Chris Smith who was a professional interim pastor before his recent retirement.  Now he is focused on a partnership between the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania (ELCT).  One key product of this partnership is the Friends of Huruma - a center for homeless kids in Iringa, Tanzania.  Since its founding, the Huruma Centre has raised more than 900 children. Their charter allows the Center to house up to 60 children  at a time from birth through age 17. The staff of the Huruma Center nurture, provide for basic needs, and care for the children.  Typically, children become homeless and arrive at the Center when parents die and no other relative is immediately found to care for orphaned children, or if children are found to have been abused by family or other caregivers.

We learned more about Al Ramos in today's "Member Minute".  Al was born in Central Minnesota and spent 31 years in the military, initially as an enlisted person, then following college graduation as an officer.  The majority of his time was with the Army Special Forces, where he interacted with many branches of the military.  Following his retirement several years ago, he has gone on to work as the Veterans Coordinator at Minneapolis College, where he has become very active with the local military-connected community.

 

Our speaker was Michelle Seets, incoming president of a nation-wide virtual Rotary Club focused on ending human trafficking.  Michelle had been living in Minnesota until last September when she moved back to her home state of Texas.  Just prior to moving, she was president of the Excelsior Rotary Club.  The charter of this new club extends beyond sex trafficking and includes other forms of slave labor that are rampant, especially in other parts of the world.  As it relates to sex trafficking, the new club is focused on raising awareness, educating children and youth, reducing vulnerabilities and risk factors, and trying to reduce or stop the demand.