October 11 Meeting Notes

Pledge of Allegiance
Fritz Seyferth

President Mark rang the opening bell ten minutes early to start an agenda-packed meeting. Tom Strode played The Star Spangled Banner and Fritz Seyferth intoned Advice From A Tree.  Shelley MacMillan led us in singing “Let There Be Peace on Earth”. President Mark welcomed guests and thanked the people who made the meeting run smoothly. Ugur Cetin congratulated the birthday and anniversary celebrants.

Shelley MacMillan
Lauren Heinonen Receives DSA

Lauren Heinonen was honored with the club’s Distinguished Service Award. Although at one time the club’s youngest member, Lauren made generous contributions of time, energy, and experience in all things necessary for electronic communications. As she goes forward with her medical degree and training, we asked that she specialize in geriatrics.

Rosemarie Rowney challenged us to search out new, or decorate old, socks to Sock It To Polio on at our October 25 meeting. We celebrate Rotary’s commitment to eradicate polio in October – October 24 is International Polio Day – and celebrating with funny socks will remind us to send a contribution to Polio Plus. There are prizes for the best socks, so don’t miss the chance to compete.

Rosemarie Rowney

The founding of our Club in 1916 was the topic of a skit reenacting a meeting with Harlan Johnson (aka Steve Schram), Theron Langford (aka Downs Herold), Shirley Smith (aka Norman Herbert), Charles Sink (aka Dave Keosaian) and Lloyd C. Douglas (aka Joe Diederich). These five men gathered to start a Rotary Club in Ann Arbor, a town-gown club.  Our club is number 252 in Rotary International; at the time there were only 27,000 Rotarians worldwide. Name badges were an issue then, and there were only fifteen members in the beginning.

Rotary History

The group agreed on speakers and small projects.  As the men each explained their hopes and dreams for Rotary, Mrs. Katreena Langford (aka Ingrid Sheldon) brought in snacks. She expressed hopes that someday women would become Rotarians, contributing their skills and enthusiasm to the new movement. The early meetings were at the Catalpa Inn, where they continued until the Union opened in 1919. This skit was written by John White, our institutional memory.

Notes from the Program

Eli Savit, our member and the Washtenaw County Prosecutor, was our speaker. The core mission of the prosecutor’s office is to investigate, prosecute and secure conviction of crimes in the county. A homicide conviction means that justice is too late – the problem is how to prevent the violence. He notes that the presence of a gun increases by five times the chances of a death in an incidence. He looks forward to the implementation of the red flag law that comes into effect in early 2024. The effectiveness of the red flag law is the collective responsibility of the community. Courts can order temporary removal of a weapon if it is reasonably likely that violence will occur so it is important to call even if there has been no crime committed.

Eli Savit

Eli talked about understanding that not every case needs to result in a criminal record, and the lifelong burden a criminal record imposes on people convicted  for crimes that are better understood as mistakes or lapses in judgment. Traditional diversion programs require guilty pleas, that are then on records. Since 2021  the county has had a program in which the Probation Office provides oversight for a pre-plea program, which upon successful completion results in no record. The recidivism rate among the 200 people who have participated in this program is less than 5%, far below recidivism rates in traditional punishments.

The county has several other programs including a Victims Resolution Center, a Conviction Integrity Unity, and Wrongful Conviction Unit.

President Foster

President Mark closed the meeting with our recitation of the Four Way Test.

Four Way Test