Meeting notes of May 22, 2024 - Rotary Club of Ann ArborRotary Club of Ann Arbor

On this lovely and breezy May day, President Mark Foster started our meeting with Ringing the Bell and Downs Herold lead us in our patriotic song, ‘America the Beautiful!’ Just in time for Memorial Day!

Rick Jarzembowski provided our inspirational message today. Also in honor of the upcoming Memorial Day holiday, he gave a brief history of the song ‘Taps’. It is always played by a bugalist and most often/always at veterans’ funerals. On Memorial Day, which became a holiday in 1966, Taps is played at 3pm at Arlington National Cemetery. We then listened to his honorable song.

Ingrid Sheldon then provided some interesting background of our club maestro, Tom Strode, who was being honored with our Distinguished Service Award today. Tom joined our Club in August, 1992 and for 32 years has been part of a group of pianists who have opened our meetings. Tom grew up in Oregon and was introduced to the keyboard early as his mother was a pianist, and by age 15, Tom was a church organist. He attended Portland State University before joining the well-known organ professor, Marilyn Mason at the University of Michigan for a doctorate in organ performance. To our benefit, Tom stayed in Ann Arbor and spent 54 years as a church musician between 2 churches in town. Tom was instrumental in starting the Boys Choir of Ann Arbor in 1987. Some other fun facts about Tom: he’s a skilled calligrapher, talented bowling score-keeper, he loves roller coasters and always scheduled an annual trip to Cedar Pointe. Ingrid went on to read some lovely quotes and stories from club members.

Mark Foster then presented the Paul Harris Fellowship Award to Tom Strode – for devotion to family, service to his community and sharing his extraordinary musical talents! Congratulations to Tom Strode!! A long and hearty round of applause ensued!

President Foster then offered thanks to the team of members helping to run today’s meeting: Dennis Burke, Kate VanHorn, Linda Kentes, Sara Maddock, Ugur Cetin, Jim Egerdal, Leo Shedden, Greg Skejskal, Pattie Katcher, Mary Steffek Blaske.

Four birthdays were announced – Happy Birthday! We welcomed one visiting guest today and hopefully a future Rotarian.

Present-Elect Joyce Hunter is setting up three upcoming listing sessions for members to share ideas and thoughts about our club. Information and links to these will be announced via email but the dates/times are: June 3 – 9:30 am, June 4 – 4pm, June 7 – noon.

Dallas Dort (dallasdort@gmail.com) speaking on behalf of the Program Committee, if you have any ideas for future speakers, please do let him know. Also he is recruiting for all of our various committees in that we are hoping to increase our numbers across all committees by 3-4 members in this next year.

Marlena Struder, promoting the Rotary Youth Exchange program, informed us that we raised $1200 to assist with hosting our upcoming youth exchange program with a visiting student in the next school year. The Japanese exchange student will be hosted by Sara Maddock and her family.

Before introducing today’s speaker, Dave Keren informed us that the Strive Program began in 1999 and today is the silver anniversary! Two Strive scholarship students and their guests attended today’s meeting. All four of last year’s recipients have pursued additional education. Dave also announced and thanked various Strive supporters including Rotary members and also school administrators. Memorial comments were made about Rotarian Linda Carter, a long time Strive supporter who recently passed away. A moment of silence was observed.

Our speaker today is Nathaniel Graulich, a 2010 STRIVE Scholarship Recipient whose talk today was titled ‘Turning Gray’.

Nathaniel is an Ann Arbor native and attended both Roberto Clemente and Stone School (Pathways) high schools. He then went on to study first at Washtenaw Community College and then to Eastern Michigan where he studied Criminal Justice. Now, Nathaniel is a PhD student at the University of Michigan studying Anthropology. He just completed his prelims and has advanced to his PhD candidacy!

Nathaniel started his talk with a version of a Positionality Statement, which is defined also as an identity statement and often included in an author’s writing. This is a type of reflection of who you are so that the reader can understand the author’s viewpoints and even biases. In providing his reflection, he spoke of his biracial ‘category’ and the relevance of race; picking one’s race and identifying as such. He went on to describe his youth and community and also compared his situation of being biracial with his brother, who was not biracial. Nathaniel says he found his sense of belonging at school. While he was at EMU studying criminal justice, he was exposed to ethnographic topics – the timing of which was consistent with uprisings against the police (ie. the death of Trayvon Martin).

Nathaniel was asked about his thoughts on racial tensions and community policing – has it changed or have the optics changed? He mentioned the development of an Unarmed Response Program at UM, now called a police co-response. In certain situations, an unarmed responder is first and then police follow as needed. The intent was to potentially de-escalate or respond to a situation first with an unarmed individual. This didn’t work especially well because essentially all calls involved a crime and police had to be called.

It was then time to present this year’s STRIVE students with their awards. The Principal of Pathways School, Shaenu Micou, and President Mark presented awards to:

Tyler Delano received the Meyers Award for most improved GPA, an award of $3,000. Gabriel Kinniebrew-Stoner received the Lester Award for best GPA, an award of $2,400.