Rotary Club of Santa Monica

"2001/2002 - A Rotary Odyssey"

Rota-Monica

TALES OF A UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT

Most of us are aware of some fragments of the hectic history of Pepperdine University: how George Pepperdine wrote six million dollars' worth of checks to create it out of nothing in 1937; how it moved from Vermont Avenue to its 830 Palm-shaded acres in Malibu, despite the California Coastal Commission's struggle to stop it; how it raised five million dollars in one year to pay for university buildings. 

Maybe Andrew K. Benton will tell us details of various Pepperdine dramas. He has been part of the university's administration since 1084, and its president since June of 2000.  "throughout his career at Pepperdine , says his official biography, he as invested himself... in securing approvals critical to the University's future, often under adverse circumstances. "

Dr. Benton originally planned to become an attorney and then a probate judge in his hometown of Lawrence, Kansas.  But after practicing law for four years, he accepted an invitation from Okalahoma Christian University to join its administrative staff. He found that campus life, and counseling young people, was so satisfying that he has stayed in that world ever since.  He joined Pepperdine as chief of staff for his friend and predecessor as president, David Davenport.  In 1991, he became the university's chief operational officer.  This meant that he worked closely with the law office, the athletics, office, the financial  people, the building contractors, an and all those speaking for Pepperdine in public affairs.  

Jonathon Kemp, our own club member who is assistant dean at Pepperdine, will introduce Dr. Benton as Friday's speaker.

NO MEETING NEXT FRIDAY

Many of us are taking a long weekend starting next Thursday, November 22, which is Thanksgiving Day.  As is customary, we'll skip the Rotary Club meeting that would normally be held on the 23rd.  Likewise, there'll be no Rota-Monica issue mailed that week.  See ya'll Friday, November 30.  

DOZENS OF GUESTS 

This is a year when all Rotary Clubs are feeling vigorous encouragement to increase net member ship.  Our current district governor, Len Wasserstein, made that clear during his annual visit to our club on November 2.  Our Club was well attuned, ads we demonstrated by inducing a flock of new members at that meeting.  

However, there is more to be done.  Our past president, jack Siegal, is at the helm for a continuing membership drive in our club, and he has arranged an extra-special meeting for November 20.  

Four nearby Rotary clubs will skip their own meetings that week in order to come and meet with us that day.  On the agenda will be a discussion of changes in rotary International rules, and what they'll mean within our own club. 

Leading the proceedings will be the three most active and elevated Rotarians in District5280.  One will be Len Wasserstein , and of course we know from his recent visit that he is a high-powered speaker.  Another will be John Colville, slated to be district governor two years from now. He has headed his own manufacturing company in Paramount since 1961, was president of the Paramount Rotary Club in 1997-98, and is a nine-time Paul Harris Fellow.

Our third leader that day will be the colorful Dr. Garbis Der Yeghian, who was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and became a high school principal there at the age of 21.  When he moved to America, he earned two college doctorates, wrote eleven books, and he was governor of Rotary's district 5300 last year.  On a visit to the former USSR, he founded the first Rotary club there, in Yerevan, Armenia.  He has been a guest speaker at 200 Rotary clubs here and abroad. 

REMEMBERING TWO FATEFUL DAYS

Our meeting on Friday, December 7 will be the sixtieth of a day all older Americans remember - Pearl Harbor Day.  Now we have another day that likewise will live in infamy - last September 11. 

Our meeting is a good time to reflect on our good fortune that America has risen above those two terrible days and to rejoice in sharing our national history.  To do so, our program will be what planner George Collins calls " a triple- hanky Day."  In other words, we'll spend an hour looking back sentimentally and patriotically.

The opening color ceremony will be the special one originated in Boy Scout Troop 2, sponsored by our club.  There'll be songs we might have sung at USO shows during World war II, a reading of some memory -stirring lines by Jack Siegal; maybe some glimpses that Norman Rockwell might have painted; and the conclusion will be Taps by a Scout Bugler.

GUESTS WE WELCOMED ON NOVEMBER 2

Welcome guests of our members we Vivian, Dora and Rene Rivas, Lynette Shishido, John p. Moffitt and Betty Cashin.  

  ROVING MONEY MAN

(ONE OF A SERIES ABOUT NEW MEMBERS)

Gerry S. Smallwood, one of our newest members, has been a banker in at least nine different countries.  These included Aden, Tehran, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand.  In the course of his career  he joined Rotary in Hong Kong in 1965, and later was in our clubs in Bangkok and Kaul a Lumpur. 

Such a wide-ranging career may sound unusual to us, but it is normal for a British banker such as Gerry.  He grew up in Yorkshire, and his first business position was in the Midland Bank, where his father and grandfather before him had been executives.  Later he switched to the Standard Chartered Bank Group, which had many branches in Asia and Africa.  "they expected to rotate all their management people through various countries, a few years at a time," he explains.  "British bankers were trained to be generalists, rather than specialists as American bankers are.  International banks had two main rules: in your first four years you must learn a foreign language, and you must not  marry."

after the four years he married. His son, mark, was born in Singapore and daughter Sarah in Hong Kong.  On his retirement in 1986, he came to Los Angeles to marry Donna, an angel he met in London.  They now live on Kenter Avenue in Brentwood. 

Gerry doesn't believe in retirement, he says.  So he joined friend s in a company that designed and sold lines of apparel; tried briefly to expand the company into local real estate just when property prices were rising too fast; then in 1994 founded Smallwood and Company, which his son manages in the Turks and Caicos Islands while he acts as the gray-haired adviser.  The company's specialty in helping people of "high net worth" arrange asset protection and tax reduction. 

Although Gerry's business career has dealt with financial matters, he was a weekend soldier for two years in the Royal Malayan Police Reserve jungle squad.  Terrorists dominated the Malayan Jungle at the time.  He commanded fourteen Chinese and Malay volunteers.  "I'd be up at five o'clock on a Sunday morning to draw arms.," he recalls, "And we'd be in the jungle before dawn.  At noon, we went off duty, and I'd go to a club to enjoy lunch and the rest of the weekend.  My predecessor had been killed, so I was uneasy for the first patrol or so, but I got used to it.  I never fired a shot in anger."

BIG DATES AHEAD

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