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History
of
The Rotary Club of Space
Center (Houston), Texas, and U.S.A.
Club 2010
District 589
for
Rotary Year
1990-1991
President
Billy
R. Smith
Chartered August 6,
1964
Twenty seven years of serving the local and
world communities with a passion for “Service Above
Self”
Officers
President
Elect
Jack Lister
Secretary
Terry
Hesson
Treasurer
Eddie
Harris
Sergeant at
Arms
Vic Maria
Editors
Robin Riley
Steve
Bolton
Donnie Johnson
Directors
David Cordell
John
Francis
David Gochnour
Joseph Hang
David
Owen
Gerald Smith
Carson Stephens
David Taylor
Owen Morris
Billy Weseman
named District 589
Rotarian of the Year
The history file contained 10
Board meeting minutes, several
newsletters, the Club member roster,17 pieces of
correspondence; and a Blue bounded
Club Assembly Report dated July 23, 1990 which contained
the Club's plans and goals, and the avenues of service
committees and
committee
members.
The Club continued to meet at the Nassau
Bay Hilton each Monday at noon with interesting programs from
guest speakers and several programs regarding the club’s
activities, Mike Dennard was the Program Committee
Chair. Ray Graham led the members in songs for
most of the meetings and the members shared in saying the
pledge to the U. S. flag, a prayer, and the Four-Way
Test. A
Christmas party and a trip
to New Braunfels provided additional opportunities for
fellowship. These gatherings were facilitated by Bill
Lowes with good attendance and great fellowship.
Golf under the leadership of Bill Predmore continued to be a
favorite. The Phone Tree was handled by Bert
Kraft.
Thirteen of the
Club's former presidents were on the
roster. A former District 589 Governor,
Floyd Boze 1981-1982, and a charter member, Vince Lipovsky, attended
the weekly club meetings. Charter members Frank Morgan,
Bev Steadman, and Charles Whynot were on the roster. Six of
the Club members were
pilots,
Bev Steadman,
John, Lee, Vince Lipovsky, Woody Williams, Charles Hartman, and Hal
Neely.
The
amount of donations given to service
projects is $4,148 based on the available
budget actuals which was through October 31, 1990 in
the December 3, 1990
Blastoff
plus a $500 donation
later. Apparently with about $40,059 from the Shrimporee, the donations were much
more. The amount of monies made from the fund
raisers since the first recorded fund raiser in 1968 is
estimated $401,950. A
flyer for the Shrimporee
and Charity Auction noted that over $350,000 had been raised
with the fund raisers over the past 16 years.
There were 18 (out a
possible 22) issues of the Club’s newsletters,
Blastoff, that could
be located. The
Club
Programs and Special Events
listing contained 5 programs.
According to the editor in the 1990-91 Committee’s
Goals and Plans, the newsletter was planned to be issued every
two weeks and in single color print. The newsletters
contained a variety of interesting items such as the essence
of many of the Club’s programs with write-ups and pictures;
future programs; make-up opportunities; Shrimporee; general
information about the Club, District, and Rotary
International; and promoting fundraisers sponsors and
promoting worth while events. Robin Riley was the editor
and Don Carico, Dennis Dillon, and Vince Lipovsky the
photographers. Photos were taken for many events and
programs and used in the Blastoff, for the media, and
eventually archiving. The newsletter was standard
size, glossy off white in color, with different
color headers. Most of the newsletters consisted of
several pages.
The Club’s membership at the end of
the Rotary year was 181 members based on the March 3, 1991
Club's Roster.
The 17th Shrimporee chaired
by Mike Brown was held on September 29, 1990 Clear Lake Park
Seabrook, Texas. It turned out to be a great event
yielding $65,006 income with $24,947 expenses leaving a net of
$40,059 according to the budget in the December 3, 1990 Blastoff . Pictures from the
Shrimporee can be viewed in the October 22, 1990 Blastoff. President Smith send a letter
to the Club members regarding what is a Rotarian and how it
applied to the Shrimporee. There was a National Championship
Wheelchair
Race for the first time in addition to
the 5K Fun Run (fourth year).
The Club
added 8 Paul Harris Fellows bringing the total to 158 since the first
recorded Paul Harris Fellow in 1973.
The first Excellence
in Education Awards for teachers in the Clear Creek Independent
School District was presented in May 1991. Kay
Baxter of Clear Lake Intermediate; Sandra King of Webster Intermediate;
Sue Lofland Clear Creek High; Mary Tuberville of McWhirter
Elementary; Sally Wall of Webster Intermediate; and Claire
Taylor of Clear View High received Excellence in Education
Certificates. Claire Taylor was named Teacher of
the Year. Pictures of the teachers and a write-up on Claire
Taylor are in the April 29, 1991 Blastoff.
The Teacher of the Year received the following awards
according to a proposal
by Dr. David Taylor to President Smith dated December 2,
1990. Read
article on
the Teacher of the Year.
1. $1,000.00 cash
award.
2. Personal plaque.
3. Plaque for the school with
the person’s portrait photo on it.
4. Perpetual plaque at
the school administration building to which the new name is
added each year.
5. Luncheon at Rotary and present the
recipient with a Paul Harris Fellowship at that meeting.
6.
Make the person an honorary member of Space Center Rotary for
that year.
7. News release
Several documents regarding
the creation of the excellence in educations award process are
listed below and can be viewed by clicking on the
document:
(1) Dr. David Taylor’s own words about
the origin of the program in a note
written in
December 2008
(2) Hand
written
schedule by unknown
writer
(3)
Letter
from David E. Shea to Dr. Ronald McCleod on the teacher
recognition proposal dated January 25, 1991
(4)
Process
dated February 1, 1991
(5)
Letter
from Dr. David Taylor to the Excellence in Education Committee
dated February 15, 1991
(6) An
announcement about the program
(7) An
announcement about the program dated February 4, 1991
(8) A
flyer
advertising the program
(9) Criteria
for selection of teacher of the year
(10) Teacher of the
year
procedures
(11)
Draft protocol for selection committee
assignments
(12)
Handwritten presentation protocol
dated April 22, 1991
District 589 conducted the
first Rotary sponsored short-term, home-to-home youth exchange
with the Soviet Union the summer of 1990 by hosting three
teenagers from Moscow and sending two American teenagers to
stay in the U.S.S.R. The district also hosted three
young people from Baku, a large city on the Caspian Sea in the
Soviet Union. Sasha Burgrova is a 15-year-old from
Moscow stayed in the home of Dr. David Taylor. She was
matched with 15-year-old Dea Taylor. While here, she
spent a week in Galveston, attended various events around
Houston, and participated in quite a number of social and
entertainment activities. The entire article “From
Russia with Love” can be viewed in the August 13, 1990 Blastoff. Read more about arranging
student exchanges with Russian Rotary with letters by Dr.
Taylor:
letter dated June
6, 1990, and
letter dated June
7, 1990.
The Club sponsored a Foreign Exchange
Student 'Overnighter' in December. Fourteen District
589 foreign exchange students and Clear Lake High School
Interact students began their weekend at the Bay Area YMCA.
They toured the Fitness Center at South Shore Harbor
and had front-row seats on the lake to view the 29th Annual
Christmas Boat Parade. They spent the night at the
Williams Recreation Center. The weekend was a big success!
Some of the participants were Aya Fujiwara - Japan;
Patty Becerra - Peru; Jens Finkenbusch -West Germany; Begona
Oerjero - Spain; Elena Molera - Spain; Maurus Groll -West
Germany; Falk Kuhnel - West Germany; Holley Hancock - Houston;
Susanna Hancock - Houston; and Timea Kalakan - Hungary.
Picture can be viewed in the February 4, 1991 Blastoff.
"TO GO WITH GOODWILL AND
RETURN WITH UNDERSTANDING" was the motto of the Rotary
International team who visited from Japan in April 1991. Team
leader, 'Dr. A'.AKA Hideyasu Aoyama, was introduced by Myra
Gochnour-Hooker. The team, representing industries such
as agricultural, banking, automotive, dental and chemical,
showed slides of their country, family & employees.
More on the visit and a picture of the team can be viewed in
the April 29, 1991
Blastoff.
The December 3, 1990, the
December 17, 1990, and
the January 14, 1991 Blastoffs have the first, second, and third in a
series of excerpts of letters from Warner Marsh, the exchange
student to Nairobi, Kenya.
The Club placed a
memorial monument at Clear Lake Park honoring deceased
members of the club. The names are noted in the
February 5, 1991 Board Minutes.
The Board pledged
$100,000 toward
building
(photo taken in 2010) a
community center
in Clear Lake Park payable no later
than five years ( February 5, 1991 Board Minutes). Jerry Smith was selected to chair the
fund raising committee. More information is in the
February 25, 1991 Blastoff and the March 18, 1991 Blastoff. (Historian
2009: A
paper dated October 10, 1993 by
President Vic Maria provided more details on the
agreement for raising $100,000 for the community center).
The Club and Citizens of Seabrook
sponsored Earth Day '91 in Seabrook, Texas on Sunday, April
21 from 1pm until 7pm on the Seabrook City Hall green.
There was numerous booths by various environmental
groups, bands, and refreshments. A display contest
was held for all the classes in the Clear Creek School District
and the Bay Area Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. It was
an opportunity to educate ourselves and the rest of our community
on the ecological issues that face us today. The
Club needed everybody's help to make this event be a big success.
Let's remember that President Costa has made 1991
the year that Rotary International will devote to preserving
our planet. More on the event in the
March 18, 1991 Blastoff.
The following article was in the
April 1, 1991
Blastoff and picture of a banner
in the April 15, 1991
Blastoff. Also
the September 4, 1990
minutes, under unfinished
business, noted that David Taylor was concerned about the
program. The September 18, 1990 minutes noted that Project Free Enterprise System was
placed under Owen Morris and the International Service.
Also there is a letter dated October 31,
1990 from Dr. David Taylor to
District 589's 55 clubs regarding a meeting on Project
Free Enterprise and an article to be placed in the
Blastoff.
Read
an interesting article from the June
1990 "Rotarian"
concerning Rotary's breakthrough in the U.S.S.R.
TODAY IS THE LAST DAY TO
JOIN PROJECT FREE ENTERPRISE
BOOSTER CLUB
Help send 4 of Space Center Rotary members
to Eastern Europe by contributing $100 and your business card.
Your card will be printed in the program to be distributed in
Galveston at the District Conference as well as Budapest,
Warsaw and Torun Poland. Joe Marcinkowski, David Taylor,
Gonzalo Montoya and Rotarians from Sugarland, Downtown,
Friendswood and Baytown clubs will visit Eastern Europe May 3
-19th and present a 2-day seminar on the principals of a
free-enterprise economy. They will teach management,
marketing, accounting, business planning and import/ export
principals. The members hope to develop a prototype which
could be used by other Rotary Clubs in other third world
countries. Please show your support by a small contribution.
The deadline is today, April 1. Thanks. Blastoff
April 1, 1991. ( Note Historian 2009: Project Free
enterprise had its beginnings according to Dr. David Taylor as
follows": "International Youth Exchange started about 1985,
and was headed in the district by Harold Jones. I served
on that first district committee, and my son was on the first
exchange we arranged and was sent to England as part of a
group of four. I chaired Youth Exchange at our club for
some time, served as the District chairman, and then in 1987
or 1988 managed to arrange exchanges with Hungary and East
Germany using non-Rotarian contacts (they were still communist
and did not have Rotary). We also sent two students to
Moscow the next year. The Youth Exchange objective is to
foster world peace through understanding. The many
countries we had exchanged with did not have peace issues with
us so an effort was made to exchange behind the Iron
Curtain. My contacts for this were Gert and Marta
Bahlo. Marta’s sister still lived in Hungary and she
contacted her and got the pastor of her church to make the
arrangements, and Gert was a native of East Germany and still
had family there. Marta was the mother of one of my
patients and her accent tipped me off. Moscow university
became the source in the Soviet Union as a result of my letter
writing. When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, I used some
of these same contacts to start an international project to go
to the Eastern bloc and give seminars on small business and
free enterprise. This was called Project Free
Enterprise. This was a Rotary project funded by a
matching grant, and some of the speakers on these trips came
from our own club – such as Gonzalo Montoya. These were
2-day free seminars to hundreds of people arranged by Rotary
clubs in Hungary and Poland. We spoke in 16 cities in
four years, and gave talks covering the business plan,
management, marketing, finance, quality assurance, business
ethics, management information systems, ISO standards,
etc. A typical team was 8 people. After NAFTA was
passed by Bill Clinton, there seemed to be a similar need for
finding common ground in our business practices with Mexico
business men, so I took a Project Amigo seminar team to Mexico
City in 1995 and gave five seminars at various places around
the city, arranged by our sister club there, Aeropuerto, and
one of its past presidents, Umberto
Orozco." )
The December 3, 1990 Blastoff has Charles Hartman holding
a child as the newest beneficiary of Dr.
Fustok.
The January 14, 1991 and
the February 4, 1991 Blastoffs have articles and pictures on
Jlissa, a 2 year old handicapped girl. She was a project
of the Handicapped Committee which donated $500 toward the
purchase of a prosthesis costing $25,000.
The
July 2, 1990 Blastoff
has a picture of those involved in the
Drug Awareness Essay contest. The May 13, 1991 Blastoff noted
a Drug Awareness Essay Contest Winner as the
program. This would be the 3rd year for the drug awareness
essay contest.
The May 13, 1991 Blastoff
noted German and Turkish
Rotary GSE representatives for the May 20 Club meeting.
Hilmar Zeissig was the District 5890 (589) GSE Chairman.
Vic Maria
and Donnie Johnson visited
HOPE VILLAGE to see the ceramics that the residents had made
for Christmas. December 3, 1990 Blastoff.
The Club provided Constable
Bill Bailey with two VCR’s to aid his department in
training. Dick Gregg Jr. of the Community Safety worked
with Constable on the request. A picture of Gregg and
Bailey is in the February 25, 1991 Blastoff.
The Clear Lake High School Interact Club
started off the school year by distributing 2500 Interact
fliers to students in grades 9-12. The first meeting overflowed
with more than 175 students. Several reports were given
outlining the various projects the Interact Club will pursue
this year. This was the second year of a highly
motivated and active membership. A write up on one of
the meetings is in the October 1, 1990 Blastoff and an article on the club's plans for the
year are in the November 19, 1990 Blastoff. The Board of Directors meeting of
September 18, 1990
noted the high interest in the Interact Club.
Sister club
Aeropuerto Club of Mexico City status:
(Historian 2009: Board of Director's Meeting minutes
dated July 7, 1992 noted the following: "The Aeropuerto club
wants to know what Space Center's level of interest is because
we have not made a club visit there for two years."
Apparently no visits took place during the Rotary
year.)
In the ensuing years, President Smith has
provided some insightful thoughts regarding many areas of the
Club. Some of these are in regard to the Space Center
Rotary Club Endowment Foundation (SCRCEF) and the
Club. Although these are future years, the
documents are placed here to reflect on the person rather than
his history. These are
Plant a Seed, dated June 23, 1997; Discussion on the
purpose of the
SCRCEF, dated July 12, 2000; the
Service Budget,
dated September 18, 1997; and Notes on a Joint Meeting of
the Club and the SCRCEF, dated January 16, 2001.
Historian 2009
.
The 82nd Rotary
International Convention was held June 2-5, 1991 in Mexico
City, Mexico. There were 15,638 in attendance. The
following information was by President Jack Lister
(1991-1992) who attended the convention. "Ten Rotarians
and wives attended the conference including, among others,
Jack Lister, President, Space Center Rotary Club, and Billy
Weseman, District 5890 Governor. Prior to the conference
our Club had established a "sister"relationship with the
Aeropuerto Club in Mexico City. Because of this relationship,
the Aeropuerto Club gave us an extraordinary welcome to Mexico
City and became our hosts during the conference. They provided
entertainment, food and made us feel "special" during our
visit. While there, we were able to discuss several mutually
beneficial programs including our program with Dr. Abdel
Fustok to provide treatment at St. John's Hospital in Clear
Lake for kids who were badly burned and disfigured and who did
not have such treatment available in Mexico. As a result of the
relationship between the two clubs, approximately a dozen
children were flown to Clear Lake and received treatment and
body restoration services from Dr. Fustok who volunteered his
services. Many of our club members were involved in hosting
and providing transportation for the children and/or parents
or traveling companions of those being treated here. Our
Club's relationship with the Aeropuerto Club in Mexico City
was very beneficial to both clubs and resulted in useful and
meaningful activities which involved several visits of the
members of the Aeropuerto Club to Houston as well as
reciprocal visits of our members to Mexico." Pictures of
the President-Elect Lister and others can be viewed in the
photo gallery.
District 589
Conference
was held on April 18-20, 1991
at the San Luis Hotel in Galveston, Texas. About 23 of
the club’s members and their spouses registered for the
conference. Billy Weseman received the prestigious
Rotarian of the Year by District Governor Tyler Baker during
the conference.
The Rotary National Award
for Space Achievement (RNASA) Foundation presented Aaron Cohen
with the 1991 National Space Trophy at the 5th annual stellar
banquet held on February 28, 1991 at the Hyatt Regency.
The front cover of the 1991 Rotary National Award for Space
Achievement Program can be viewed by clicking on 1991 RNASA Program. The names of the members of the 1991
RNASA Foundation and a write-up About the Cover can be
viewed by clicking on 1991
RNASA Foundation.
Rotary year 1990-91 was placed in
archives April 2011.
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