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March 4, 2008 No. 20
Vol. 86
This Week’s Program:
Cynthia Lake, Children’s Dream Fund
Cynthia Lake was born
in Columbus, Ohio and moved to St. Petersburg in 1960. She attended
Pinellas County public schools and graduated from St. Petersburg High
School. She attended Denison University and graduated from the
University of Florida with a B.A. in Spanish.
After teaching school,
she “retired” to be married and subsequently had three children, John,
Courtney and Katharine. In 1985, she was offered the opportunity to work
for the Children’s Dream Fund on a part-time basis. The Children’s Dream
Fund was formed in 1981 as a non-profit organization whose mission is to
make dreams come true for seriously ill children on the West Coast of
Florida. In the ensuing years, Ms. Lake has become the Executive
Director of the organization, and the Children’s Dream Fund has made
dreams come true for close to 2,000 children.
Ms. Lake is a
Certified Fund Raising Executive (CFRE) and has served as a member of
the board of directors of the Suncoast Chapter of the Association of
Fund Raising Professionals. She is a graduate of Leadership Tampa Bay,
and is President of the St. Petersburg Downtown Rotary Club. She is the
past president of the Association of Wish Granting Organizations. She is
a member of the International Relations Commission for the City of St.
Petersburg. She is an active member of her church where she has had a
teaching ministry to both children and adults.
In 2005, Ms. Lake
spent a 3-month sabbatical working with children orphaned due to the
AIDS virus in Uganda, East Africa through the Rafiki Foundation, and
returned again in the spring of 2007.
Welcome, Cynthia.
We’ll forgive your leadership post with Rotary if you promise to tell us
about the work you do in your professional and personal life!
Last Week’s Program
Matt Silverman, President, Tampa Bay Rays
Kiwanian-of-the-Day
Bob Byelick introduced our speaker, Matt Silverman,
President of the Tampa Bay Rays by saying that he has brought new
ideas to baseball and to baseball management. Matt introduced John
Higgins, attorney for the Rays, and a former Club member, who brings us
the program every year for the Rays’ season. Matt spoke about what the
Rays do in the off season, what their name means now and the topic on
everyone’s mind – the plans for a new stadium on the waterfront.
Having dropped “The
Devil” from their name, the Rays now stand for “Rays of Light” and their
uniforms sport a new color palette. Stu Sternberg, Matt said, stressed
the importance of investing in a team, and by focusing on retention and
draft picks in the last season, they don’t have to build a team now;
they know who’ll be their third baseman for the next several years.
Optimism is at an all-time high and now they have as well the excitement
of the prospect of a new stadium downtown. Matt said he welcomed
questions positive and negative and he got some of both. He showed an
overview of St. Pete and the site – fifteen acres and Al Lang Field.
Since they’re moving spring training to Charlotte, it will free up Al
Lang for other use, he said. A new stadium would allow them to give
Tropicana Field back to the City for development and the new stadium
would be the western anchor downtown with surrounding development
including restaurants, high end retail like Nordstrom’s and Crate and
Barrel, and residences including affordable housing. He sees the change
as bringing in new tax dollars to the City and hopes City Council will
put it on the ballot in June, so that it will be before the public in
November.
What about parking,?
he was asked. They’re talking to garage owners and parking lot owners to
see if they’re willing to go online and allow game parking when they are
typically almost empty. If the new stadium doesn’t go through, will they
stay at Tropicana Field? $20 million went into improvements at
Tropicana, so they could, but they probably wouldn’t stay there through
their 20 year lease, probably just 8 or 9 years. Why are there “no
financial details” yet? Matt said it’s just too early, still gathering
information, but that he would be happy to come back in June or July
when he can go over what they’ve come up with. What about noise and
lights intruding on the privacy of high-end residences downtown? Matt
explained that while he couldn’t say there would be no disturbance, the
orientation of the stadium would block some noise and the lights are
positioned such that they illuminate almost straight down onto the
field. When someone asked about steroid use, Matt laughed and pointed
out that the first baseball question didn’t come till 1:05. He answered
that Florida is working hard to rid itself of that image and said that
Florida is very clean. It’s a blemish on the sport, he said, and he
hopes that they can switch the focus back onto the game.
Guests and Visitors
Our Rays program with
Matt Silverman last week brought a full house to Orange Blossom. 59
members and 23 guests and visitors turned out to hear and ask questions
about the proposed waterfront stadium and other news of the Rays.
Harry Eisnaugle brought back old friend Bob Claycomb, Markus
Mittermayr brought three friends, Dr. David Stromp, Dan Nardozzi and
Vern Gayne, Jeff Francis introduced his father, Earl Francis and
Charles Stuart escorted the lovely Judy Stuart. JC Russell
hosted Stephen Hawking (no, not the physicist!), Bret Jahn was
accompanied by Sam Meyers, Michael Brown brought Mark Carlson,
Pat Kraujalis hosted David Harpool and Doug Lampe introduced
Gary Keller. Also attending were Lynn Richard, guest of Paul Renker,
Arnold Lawner, guest of Tom Nelson, David Feaster brought
Mike Nicolas, and Jeff Vinachi was the guest of Hunter Booth.
What’s Happening?
Kiwanians Donate To
SSBC In Memory Of Filomena Murphy
Our Club took up a
collection and donated $236 in Mrs. Murphy’s memory to Sistahs Surviving
Breast Cancer, the group the Murphy family had suggested. We send our
thoughts and prayers to the grieving friends and family of a lovely
woman gone too soon.
Special Olympics A
Great Day For All
Cynthia Mulligan
reports that the Special Olympics games that took place at Lakewood High
were fun and inspirational as “special” young athletes proved their
mettle by competing with the determination of world-class Olympians. We
look forward to her recap today. Charles Stuart documented the
event in pictures that appear in this issue. Thank you, Kiwanis
volunteers! Your big hearts make a difference wherever you lend a hand.
Kiwanis Team Spirit
Needed
Harvey Ford and
his team continue to offer us InterClub opportunities, but can hardly
get four Kiwanians, required, to sign up and eat with another fun Club.
Off your duffs, Kiwanians! If you can’t muster up enthusiasm to go as
proud ambassadors, psych yourselves up by going as infiltrating spies!
You’ll be glad you did and not just for the cool sticker you get for
your name tag. (Bring back whatever passes as their bulletin to Frank
and me! We can be very competitive!)
Lithuanian Golf
Tournament Next Week
Whether you’re
motivated by the cause or just shamelessly self-interested, plan to
participate in the Annual Lithuanian Open Golf Tournament to be held on
Monday, March 10. Get a flyer, the location and all other pertinent
information from our favorite Lithuanian, Big Al Karnavicius, organizer,
at today’s meeting or find him at
www.bayprintonline.com. He promises Lithuanian beer on the course to
those who think that’s a good thing. More importantly, the proceeds go
to provide much needed services and programs to Lithuanian children.
4th
Annual Jim Fischer Birthday Bash
Mark your calendar on
June 14th to attend our annual Jim Fischer Birthday Bash, a
fundraiser that raises college scholarship money for high performing
grade-schoolers and middle-schoolers from low-income families. Please
save the date and plan to attend.
Scholarship
Recipients
And speaking of Jim
Fischer…Bob Byelick read us more entertaining letters from our
seventh and eighth grade scholarship recipients who want to be lawyers,
doctors and hair stylists, among others. The kids we’ve helped continue
to inspire us to do more for even more kids in the future.
Golf Goodies
And speaking of Jim
Fischer AND Bob Byelick…Bob is looking for goody bag items for
the golfers who’ll compete in the Jim Fischer Golf Tournament on April
14th. If you have company promotional items, donate a hundred
of them to this good cause.
March Comes In Like
A Frosted Cake…And Goes Out Like A Roman Candle
What do Chastity Bono,
Knute Rockne and Antonio Vivaldi have in common? They share a birthday,
today, March 4th!
TODAY’S QUIZ:
- March is Women’s History Month. A famous
American writer said “Human beings are more alike than unalike, and
what is true anywhere is true everywhere, yet I encourage travel to
as many destinations as possible for the sake of education as well
as pleasure. Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: "I'm with
you kid. Let's go." Can you name her?
- What inspired the Special Olympics movement
and when did it get its start?
- In what decade did Henry Sullivan become the
first American to swim the English Channel? A. the ‘40s B. the
‘20s C. the 1890s D. the ‘50s
- Fifty-five years after the sinking of what
ship did Congress and President Clinton clear the ship's captain,
Charles Butler McVay III, of any wrongdoing in the Navy's worst
wartime disaster?
LAST WEEK’S
QUIZ:
1. The first cows came to America with Christopher
Columbus in 1493.
2. The Bourne Identity
is a spy fiction thriller by Robert Ludlum about an amnesiac who must
discover who he is. At the beginning of the story the protagonist is
found floating in the Mediterranean Sea.
3. At the top of the second, you hear the announcer talking about
"the hot corner." On the baseball diamond,
the slang term “hot corner”
means the defensive position of third baseman.
4. We live in the galaxy called “The Milky Way.” Using the Hubble
Telescope and other methods, astronomers and astrophysicists estimate
that there are possibly as many as 500 billion galaxies in our
universe. And that every one of them has a Starbucks.
PRAYER OF THE DAY
(AIDS Prayer for Africa and
the World)
We open
our hearts and minds to the welfare of all people with HIV and AIDS. We
ask that they be held in love and feel Divine support.
We pray for resources and education so that the spread of the disease
will cease.
We pray
that a vaccine will be found. We pray that those infected receive
affordable medications to improve their comfort and quality of life.
We pray that the dying are held in a place of comfort and grace as they
cross over. We pray for the welfare of all bereaved. We pray that the
orphaned children be lovingly cared for.
We pray for grace for the babies born with AIDS and ask that loving care
will ease their suffering. We give thanks to the Divine knowing that
this will be so.
Amen
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