At
this Friday’s meeting we should listen carefully, perhaps ask questions,
perhaps respond to questions from the speaker.
We’ll be part of a sophisticated civic experiment called the Santa
Monica Education Initiative.
“Initiative” suggests an election-day ballot measure.
But this is a different kind of initiative.
As possible answers to needs of Santa
Monica College and the city’s Unified School District, school officials have
drawn up six major proposals with numerous subsections.
The hard-working officials are now explaining the proposals (the
“initiative”) to all the service clubs, PTAs, home-owner and neighborhood
associations, senior citizen groups and other watchful organizations.
August 18 is our club’s turn to hear and digest the plans.
They include ideas for earthquake restoration, acquiring and using land,
and various other steps.
When these briefings are completed, probably in November, an independent
firm will poll the participating groups. Then
SMC trustees and the city school board will take the results as their guide to
action.
School people feel that this succession of
forums and feedback, slow as it is, can put them in step with local
sentiment while also giving them a chance to soften the stands of nay-sayers.
Such a plan has worked here twice.
In 1992 it was used to inform groups about a proposed school bond issue.
The subsequent bond measure passed, although it had previously failed.
In 1998 some forty public meetings sifted Santa Monica College’s master
plan for expansion and improvement. The
plan won widespread approval and has moved ahead.
Our speaker will be Dr. Thomas J. Donner.
He is chief business officer of the college district, and served as
interim president in 1994-95. He’ll bring along printed summaries of the initiative,
together with the address of a Web site where the massive text is available in
full.
August
25
Inside the Olympic Games: Mike
O’Hara
September
1
No meeting – Labor Day
September
8
Teenage Drunk Driving: Captain
Ron Green
September 15 Craft Talks: two new members
At our August 4th
meeting, Past President Herb Roney was noted as being the second most
chronologically gifted alumnus of Santa
Monica College. This is so
incredible it is almost unbelievable. Herb’s
youthful demeanor would not allow him to be thus distinguished.
We hope he will pay the $75 fine anyway, as injustices do happen in life.
Phil Tirone was honored for his journey to the Holy Land.
Had he been more pious and less observant, he would not have seen the
purported character who “illegally waved his firearm.”
This observation cost Phil $250. His
story wins the Good Humor Award of the week.
Congratulations and a $100 fine
to Jack Siegal and his
daughter, Jill for philanthropic acts. This
attitude comes naturally to her, since both parents have long supported many
kinds of community service hereabouts.
Our esteemed President John confessed that he had received quantities of “hate mail”
for wrongly terming our club the Santa Monica Rotary Club instead of the Rotary
Club of Santa Monica. In
penance he fined himself an amount too small to be worth mentioning.
n Lionel Ruhman
“Fathers who are killing each other stop for three days so our
volunteers can go in and vaccinate their children.”
Page 52
“Imagine what life would be like if every time you picked up a
newspaper all the words and letters appear jumbled.
That’s the reality faced by millions with dyslexia.”
Page 27
“Encyclopedia Britannica is the first to make its entire content
available for free on the Web.” Page
15
“A thief can wipe out your entire bank account, at least temporarily,
if you carry a debit charge card.”
Page 9
“What happens when adults encourage teens to embrace risk?” page 40
Thomas S. Loo keeps a benign eye on week-to-week doings of eight
different committees in our club, and reports on them to our board of directors.
That’s his special duty as a director.
But that’s not all he does for us.
Of his own volition he works as a member of two club committees.
One is the first-year activities committee, which seeks in several
different ways to make sure that new members of the club take root comfortably
among us. His other post (where
he’s served for six years) is on the student exchange committee, which helps
Rotary District 5280 play host to twenty students from Japan each August.
He arranges a memorable day
in and around Santa Monica for the group.
Committees assigned to Tom as a director include three busy
ones: recruitment, Rotary
information, and first-year activities. The
first is continuously seeking
qualified prospects to meet the RI goal of a five percent net gain in
membership. The second, composed of
past presidents of the club, arranges periodic “fireside” evenings
where new members get a memorable briefing on Rotary’s impressive history and
tested procedures. The third starts
working with a new bunch of members every few weeks.
Tom’s five other committees roll along in smooth grooves, having geared
up for their work several months before taking over.
“Most Rotary machinery is heavy on the front end – the advance
planning,” Tom observes. “Once
set up, most of our operations run almost automatically through the year.”
For four months last spring, with advice from President John and others,
Tom studied members’ questionnaire answers, which showed their preferences for
committee assignments. He
buttonholed those who seemed likely to function easily as chairpeople.
It turned out that everyone he approached agreed to serve.
Then he and John helped them make careful plans.
“As I expected, all these committees are working congenially,” Tom
says. “About all I do is keep in
touch.”
Tom has always kept track of many matters almost simultaneously.
He earned degrees from USC in both accounting and law.
Two years after graduation he began a 25-year stint on the USC law
faculty, simultaneously building his own law practice.
In 1986 his firm merged with the Bryan Cave international law firm, whose
550 lawyers are scattered in fifteen offices around the world (including one
which represents the government of Kuwait against Saddam Hussein before the
World Court). Bryan Cave was the
first international firm to maintain a Santa Monica office.
Tom’s office here is responsible for much of the firm’s West Coast
work. He helps corporate clients
with ramifications of buying other companies or being acquired, or
publicly issuing stock.
Thus his life must seem like a juggling act.
Rotary duties are somewhat new to him, since this is his first term on
our board of directors. But Rotary
has been in his family a long time. His
father was a Paul Harris Fellow and 30-year member of the Rotary Club in Yuma,
Arizona, and served a year as club president.
Tom joined his dad at two international conventions, which hooked him on
Rotary at a tender age. Tom was in
the Century City club from 1975-86. In
1990 we welcomed him into our club. Now
we’re glad he finds time to sit on the board.