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March 2024
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Our club has its own Facebook page. If you have a Facebook account, just click on this link to visit the page—and LIKE it while you are there! The only way we can build recognition for the club is for you and your friends to visit the site and interact with it.
 
How do you interact? Glad you asked. Like individual posts. Write comments on them. Share posts on your own timeline so that your friends will see them. All of these things greatly enhance the visibility of our site.
 
For example, find the post about Marianne (at least a dozen other people already have). Click the Like button below the picture, write a comment, and re-post it on your own page. What’s not to like? Help us build our readership by taking action. Thanks.
 

 
 
 
David Melcher, president of Yucca Valley Rotary, has a collection of Rotarian magazines going clear back to its beginning in 1911. He recently noticed a paragraph in the Jan 1935 issue that talks about our own club, the Rotary Club of San Bernardino, highlighting our club’s efforts to eliminate Polio as far back as 80 years ago.
 
The paragraph is on page 40 and is part of a report on the activities of Rotary clubs around the world. To see the original, you can click on the magazine cover on the left; then navigate to page 40. Here is what is says:

Furnish Paralysis Serum
  San Bernardino, Cal. --- Establishment of a foundation to provide a costly serum to combat infantile paralysis in the
county has just been completed by the Rotary Club of San Bernardino, working with the county medical society and the county hospital. Through a fund provided by the Rotary club, it is believed that all the serum required locally can be produced at the county hospital. Heretofore no adequate supply has been available locally, necessitating the purchase of the serum in cities too far distant and at too great a cost for most parents. Charity patients will, of course, be provided with the serum free of charge. Those patients who are not in this classification, but who cannot afford to pay the 50 to 150 dollars [$2,050 in 2015 dollars] usually charged for the serum, may now purchase it through the foundation at a nominal sum. Money collected for the serum from those who can pay will be used to maintain the foundation. Since there is no known treatment to immunize against infantile paralysis, and the present treatment must be administered before paralysis sets in, it is highly important that an adequate supply be always on hand. Rotarians of San Bernardino and those working with them have thus made a significant contribution to the cause of those who might otherwise be maimed for life.
 

 
 

 
AWARD WINNING CLUB. Under the leadership of our fearless President, we were once again recognized as a leading club in the district with awards above and beyond a club of our size. Donnis will tell all at our Tuesday meeting -- there are more awards than just the ones shown here.
 
 
 
 
AWARD WINNING MEMBERS. And here is a special District Service Award being given to Bob -- a special honor for a special Rotarian.
 
 
 
 
 

 
Here are a few pictures of our 2015 Character Education Awards. Steve Gazzaniga received the Top Teacher Award for 2015 and a check for $2,000 and three other finalist received $500 awards. The Character Education award trophy will be on display at Steve's school for a year until next year's competition.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
Our own Ray King gave us a review of the state and capability of our San Bernardino Police Department. Given the current limitations on the resources of our City it is gratifying to know how well the Department is doing by carefully marshaling its resources and directing them to areas of greatest need. It is an old saying that there are no heroes in scarce resource management but our local Police seem fully engaged in the effort.
 
 
 

 
 
 
Rotary Life Scholars with help from Sheila, Ed, and Linda worked hard on Saturday to help feed the homeless and the 40,000 in San Bernardino who do not have a secure source of food. Here they are at Helping Hands Pantry warehouse
 
Sorting among discards for good food:
 
 
Packing food into sacks for distribution:
 
 
The finished product;
 
 
Helping Hands feeds 7,000 to 10,000 people each week from their distribution center at San Bernardino Airport. In addition to food for the needy at the airport, they provide food for the homeless from a truck that makes field stops from here to Redlands. They also have programs for local students in grade school through university graduate school levels. And they organize a distribution of USDA provided food once each month.
 
I am sure Linda will tell us much more about the event and have better pictures to publish in our next Orange Peal.
 
 
 

 
 
 
This is one our best programs of the year -- every year!
 
Two students from each class (a total of 8) will give speeches during the meeting. At the end judges will pick the top three speakers and they will receive cash prizes. The First Place winner will go on to the District elimination rounds.
 
Please help us keep a level playing field for the contestants. Don't get up and move around the room during a speech. Don't talk or make a disturbance. And, please, no clapping or cheering when a speaker finishes. Keep everything neutral and give everyone the same chance to do their best.
 
Speakers will be graded on their presence, engagement, delivery and how well they incorporate the principles of the Four-Way Test into their speech. So, let the speeches begin!
 
 
 

 
 
 

 
 

Paul Green died Tuesday, Feb 24, at the age of 91. A true pioneer and ground breaker in the Air Force, his final USAF assignment brought him to San Bernardino as Commander of Norton Air Force Base in 1974, two years before his retirement after 33 years of service. Following retirement he was recognized many times for his service and commitment to our community including his term as President of our Rotary Club of San Bernardino.
 
Paul was club president during the Rotary year of 1988-1989. He is remembered as a gracious, genuine guy – totally trustworthy, totally dependable – with a gentle chuckle that could light up a room and no trace of resentment or bitterness toward the barriers he experienced in his life.
 
Paul’s mother died when he was 6 and he taken in at the Ohio Soldiers and Sailors Orphans Home in Xenia, Ohio. It was integrated and run like a military school where the boys learned drills, discipline, and classwork together. But when he graduated from high school, trained as an electrician, his teacher could find jobs for the white boys but not the two blacks.
 
His mentor and father figure, Karl Schliep urged him to go to college but Paul didn’t have the money. He went instead to work at nearby Wright-Patterson Air Force Base where he saw a poster that said, “The Air Force needs pilots.” That poster changed his life.
 
Paul studied, trained, and passed all the requirements for pilot training: academic, physical and psychological. But military leaders at that time did not think blacks could do anything so complicated as piloting as aircraft and Paul was barred from trying.
 
Drafted into the Army Quartermaster Corps in 1943, he learned of the recently approved Tuskegee Airmen program. Paul was accepted in 1944 and joined a class of 340 prospective aviators. He was one of the 30 who graduated; the other 310 had dropped out along the way.
 
Paul credits his years at the orphanage and Schliep’s guidance for preparing him for the Air Force. “He put me in the right direction, almost any success I had, I would say it came from that orphans home.”.
 
Upon completion of flight school, he joined the 99th Fighter Squadron and flew combat missions in Italy. A Command Pilot who accumulated than 5,000 flying hours, he flew a wide variety of aircraft. In turns, he became a Squadron and then a Wing Electronics Officer, a Mission Commander of an Organizational Maintenance Squadron, Aircraft Maintenance Control Officer, a Wing Chief of Maintenance, and a Wing Deputy Commander for Logistics.
 
During WWII Paul returned to Xenia, Ohio, while on leave. He met a girl who was also born in the same small town. “Paul came back as a commissioned officer,” said Angel. “He asked me to dinner and the rest is history.” They were married 68 years and have two children: daughter Noriko, living in Georgia and son Galen, living in Studio City. They also have three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
 
The Greens moved 38 times in their 30 years in the Air Force, including Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam and Germany. Paul was stationed in some extreme places ranging from T-3, an ice island at the geographic North Pole, to the jungles of Southern Asia. Some of Angel’s memories from this time are bittersweet. She recalls visiting South Carolina where they were pushed off the sidewalks because blacks had to walk in the street where they belonged.
 
Paul always rose above such difficulties. In all, he received 18 military awards, honors, and decorations including the Meritorious Service Medal, the Air Medal, the Bronze Star and the Presidential Unit Citation, all with Oak Leaf Clusters. He is remembered in his military career for his leadership and accomplishment.
 
These same qualities were also well recognized in our community. In addition to his presidency of our Rotary Club he served as a member of the Board of Governors of the National Orange Show as well as many other community boards (Arrowhead United Way, the YMCA, San Bernardino Tournament of Roses Association,  . . . the list goes on).
 
In February 2006, Colonel Green received an Honorary Doctorate in Public Service from Tuskegee University in Alabama. He was Grand Marshal of the 2006 Highland Fourth of July Parade and now has a street named after him in Highland. In 2007 he was named "Unforgettable Citizen of The Year" by The Unforgettables Foundation. He had the honor or riding on the Tuskegee float, “A Cut Above the Rest”, in the 2009 Rose Parade. And he was awarded the Heroes of the Heartland Award by Stator Bros. Charities in 2012.

 
Throughout, Paul lived steadfastly by 12 principles that he wrote down as a bill of personal responsibilities for the men under his command. The first was the Golden Rule and the last ended with “It is my responsibility to do those things now that will make this world a better place after I am gone.
 
A visitation will be held on Sunday, March 15 from 3-5pm with a service on Monday, Mar 16 at 9:30am. Both will be at Bobbitt Memorial Chapel, 1299 E Highland Ave in San Bernardino. The Committal Service with full military honors will follow at 12:00 noon at Riverside National Cemetery, 22495 Van Buren Blvd, Riverside, CA 92418. 

Many thanks to Cassie MacDuff, the SB Sun, and the Highland Community News for most of the above information.
 
 

 
 
 
Mike gave us an overview of the work he is doing to provide soldiers with a “touch of home” through a simple game of catch wherever they find themselves on today’s battlegrounds. Learn more at www.operationglove.org check out their Facebook page.
 

The genesis of Operation: Glove lies in today’s increasingly high rates of suicide among the United States military.
  • 23 United States veterans per day take their own life. And,
  • Since 2010, the leading cause of death among active duty US military is suicide.
Analyzing the data on military suicides is more complex than you might expect. The military has good records on active duty soldiers and saw the rising rates that started with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The VA, however, historically has tracked only veterans that have contacted the VA and were brought into its system. In 2010 the VA made major changes in its record keeping forming alliances with state governments to obtain records on nearly all veterans who commit suicide. That will help to improve its information going forward.

But collecting a lot of data doesn’t lead to simple answers because suicides are strongly age and sex dependent and the military population is heavily skewed from the civilian one, even among veterans. While the increase in active duty military suicides can be linked closely with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, most veterans who commit suicide are over the age of 50. And, at the same time, civilian suicide rates have also increased, presumably due to the Great Recession that began in Dec 2007.

The numbers take a long time to collect and analyze. USA Today published a story in 2014 saying that veterans ages 18-24 and enrolled in the VA’s health program killed themselves at a rate of 46 per 100,000 in 2009 and nearly 80 per 100,000 in 2011, the most recent data then available. It compared that to a rate of about 20 per 100,000 for non-veterans of the same age according to data from the CDC during 2009 and 2010, again the most recent available.

But . . . veterans who have checked into VA Hospitals aren’t very much like the general population even after you have corrected for age. And most veterans who commit suicide are over the age of 50 and have retired from the military long before. The effects of PTSD often appear many years, even decades, down the road from the events that caused them.

So, it is going to be a long time before we truly know the human cost of our recent wars.

 
 

 
 
Two weeks ago Clifton Peters, local attorney, presented an overview of the foundation that supports our San Bernardino Public Libraries. Funded by gifts and donations, it currently has a list of $69,194 in funded and proposed projects for 2014/2015. These range from an eBook and Audio Book program ($19,200), to an electronic course in Opposing Viewpoints ($2,624.51, to tutoring programs for all levels of students ($5,250).
 
Peters opened the program by walking around the room and introducing each member by name which he had learned by shaking hands with each member as they came into the meeting – a pretty impressive memory feat. Then he proceed to tell about the founding of rotary and about our major service projects, again all from memory.
 
The San Bernardino City Library Foundation is dependent upon fund raisers and donations for its work. It not only deals with materials and programming; it also supports equipment and capital improvements in the library system.
 
“Poetry and Hums aren’t things which you get, they’re things which get you. And all you can do is go where they can find you.” - Winnie the Pooh
 

 
 
The San Bernardino City Library Foundation is a non-profit, 501(c)(3) corporation created to provide funding for areas of education, programming, materials, capital improvements and special projects that are beyond the usual and customary funding received by the Library from the City of San Bernardino.
 
 
 

 
 
One of the leadership building activities for Rotary Life students is to plan and carry out a visit of the Governor for District 5330. Shab gave a particularly motivating story centered around the experiences in his life that started in poverty in Lebanon and have culminated in his prominence here in our local community.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
Who knew that Muscubiabe was actually the "easy" spelling of a rancho named after the Amuscupiabitites who occupied a Serrano village in the Cajon Pass. And who would have thought that we had modern all-electric trains running up and down Electric Avenue back in the "old" days. This was a fascinating and enlightening talk by local author and historian, Nick Cataldo. 
 
 
 

 
 
Just some of Bob's pictures of the party.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
As we begin a new Rotary year, I would like to tell you that I’m honored to be your Rotary International president and to stand with you as Rotary members.
 
Being a Rotarian is about a way of approaching the world and its challenges. There are many people in this world who need help and many changes that need to be made. It can be overwhelming.
 
Confucius and Rotary share similar ideas, and one idea from Confucius is that “It is better to light one single candle than to sit and curse the dark.” To me, this means that we shouldn’t lose hope and do nothing.
 
Instead, do something positive in your community, and let people know that Rotarians enjoy being together and working together. Involve your spouse and family in Rotary. Sharing your love for Rotary will recruit new members and keep current ones, and be the action that lights a candle.
 
 

 
 
 
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