Rotary
Club of Santa Monica
"2001/2002 - A Rotary
Odyssey"
Rota-Monica
ISSUE NO. 38 April
26, 2002 OUR 80th
YEAR
ww.RotaryClubofSantaMonica.org
GENTLE BILL THE JUDO MAN
Two people are in prison because of our
longtime member Bill Randle, this Friday’s speaker. He has taught judo since
1959, and at least two students have used his teachings to subdue criminals in
hand-to-hand combat. One collared a would-be bank robber during an attempted
hold-up, and held him until police came. Another, a teenager, arrived home one
night and encountered a burglar whom he overcame.
Bill unwillingly enrolled in his first judo
class at age ten. He was spending a summer in Oakland with his grandfather, who
realized that he needed something to keep him busy. They happened onto a nearby
judo class. “Kids in white coats were throwing each other around,” Bill
recalls. “I said, ‘Let me think about this,’ but my grandfather said, ‘No
thinking – you start now.’”
Bill’s parents settled in Santa Monica in
1951. He attended Lincoln Junior High, SamoHi, and St. Monica’s. He was also
active in the YMCA where he took more judo instruction and eventually began to
teach it.
During most of his youth, Bill planned to
become either a priest or a brother in a Catholic order working with
delinquents. He was a student at Notre Dame and then at St. Edward’s University
in Texas. He had already taken temporary vows when he decided not to continue.
He was on the program staff at the Westside
YMCA on Sawtelle when the Wilshire Rotary Club sent him to the Philippines for
seven weeks in 1976 as part of Rotary’s worldwide group study exchange program.
He looks back on that journey as one of the formative experiences of his life.
Consequently he was delighted when, soon after he became associate general
director of the Santa Monica Y, he was invited to join our club in 1983.
We all know him by sight, because he’s the
pleasant-faced member sitting at the check-in table when we arrive for
meetings. He’s also the one who carries around the mike to would-be-questioners
when the day’s speaker is ready to take questions. Likewise, when any of us
drop in at the Y, Bill is usually the first one we see, because he stations
himself at the counter to meeting new arrivals and point them toward wherever
they want to go.
Bill has taught judo to at least 13,000 pupils,
some of whom have stayed to help him for as long as thirty years. He has
steered 34 of his students to the highest rank in judo – black belt – and four
have gone on to join him as professors in the American Ju Jitsu Foundation.
He’ll show us a few judo tricks in Friday’s talk.
LOOK FOR THESE IN OUR MAGAZINE
What would Rotary do about anti-American
feeling in Muslim countries? The Rotary International board of directors
plunged into this question at recent board meetings. It worked out a three-way
campaign to be undertaken by Rotarians in those countries, and in parts of this
country where Muslims are numerous. Read about it on page 54 of the April
Rotarian.
We’re working energetically to draw former
Rotaractors into Rotary Clubs but some turn away because the membership fees
seem high. To counteract this RI is encouraging local Rotary clubs to waive
membership fees for ex-Rotaractors between the ages of 30 and 35, as reported in
The Rotarian on page 54.
What to do with an unneeded fire engine? That
was a problem that faced the town of Sierra Madre in California after it bought
a new fire engine. The old one might be needed somewhere, but where? The
Sierra Madre Rotarians determined to find an answer. How they solved the
problem is on page 51 of The Rotarian.
Are there many hungry people in the town of
South Portland, Maine? Ten years ago the local Rotary Club looked into the
matter. It cooked a meal, set the tables, served the dinner, washed the dishes
and swept the floor. Some of the 250 who came to eat were homeless, while
others worked low-paying jobs or were subsisting on low incomes as retirees. So
the Rotarians have kept on ever since, serving a big free meal once every
month. You’ll find the story in The Rotarian on page 50.
China’s first Rotary Club was started in
Shanghai in 1919. But in 1949, when the People’s Republic of China came to
power, Rotary clubs all over the country were disbanded or went underground.
During the 1980s and 1990s Rotary International kept plugging away at returning
Rotary to China. Its polio eradication program, which helped China cut polio
cases from 10,000 in 1981 to 1,191 in 1992, helped Rotary gain the trust of the
Chinese government. Today China has been declared polio-free, and Rotary clubs
have been reestablished in Shanghai and Beijing. The Rotarian tells the whole
story on pages 42-46 of the April issue.
TIME TO HONOR A HEROIC GROUP
Our club honors our Santa Monica firefighters
once every year, singling out a few for tribute as part of a meeting program we
call “Public Servants Day,” scheduled for our May 10 meeting this year. That’s
been part of our schedule as far back as any of us can recall.
Aside from that, scant public notice is taken
of those stalwart public servants. In California about 14 firefighters, on
average, are killed in action each year, usually without any public mention.
But this year there’s been a change.
In Sacramento, a beige limestone wall was
unveiled in Capitol Park last month. It bears the chiseled names of the 855
California firefighters who have gone down since 1850. The memorial is the
culmination of a ten-year campaign that began in 1992 when California
firefighters saw a national firefighter wall of names in Colorado Springs.
The California Fire Foundation began working
to raise money for a firefighters’ memorial. The goal was to build and maintain
it entirely through private donations. A grass-roots movement started in
community firehouses. Local fire departments did car shows, golf tourneys, and
anything they could think of. The state Department of Motor Vehicles issued
special firefighter license plates. Since 1993, 16,000 plates have been sold,
netting $1.3 million for the project.
Another $900,000 came through a voluntary
check-off section on the state income tax form, allowing taxpayers to donate a
fraction of tax refunds to charitable causes. When the memorial was unveiled
April 6th, Governor Gray Davis spoke and about 3,000 local firefighters
attended.
COMING ATTRACTIONS
