If you didn’t make it to our last Rotary Club of Forest Grove meeting, here’s what you missed…

Online Meetings: Our club continues to meet virtually using the Zoom Meeting platform. Our weekly meetings will begin at our normal meeting time, Noon on Wednesday. All Rotarians are welcome and participating will count towards meeting attendance. Here are the login details…

Direct Link: https://zoom.us/j/183084884
Meeting ID: 183 084 884

To join by phone, dial 669-900-6833 or 346-248-7799 and enter the meeting ID number when prompted.

Zoom App Downloads
Zoom Cloud Meeting App For Android
Zoom Cloud Meeting App For iPhone
Download Zoom Meeting App For Desktop

Golf Tournament: Mark your calendars for Wednesday, August 11, for the club’s annual golf tournament at Sunset Grove Golf Course. This is currently scheduled to be the club’s first in-person meeting back following the COVID pandemic and we are looking forward to seeing everyone face to face.

The day will begin with a barbeque lunch, which all members are invited to regardless of if you are playing in the tournament or not. Golf will tee off around 1 p.m. If you plan on attending for lunch, golf or both, RSVP to Tim Schauermann by Wednesday, August 4.

Classics On Main: Thank you to all Rotarians who came out to support the Concours Classics On Main event on Sunday, July 18. The participants were quite pleased with the event, which featured nearly 60 classic cars along Main Street and 21st Avenue. A number of cars left Forest Grove around 10:30 a.m. and toured to Salem and the Brothers Museum.

August 18 Meeting: Mark your calendars for Wednesday, August 18, for the first of our combined evening meetings between the weekly noon club and the satellite club. Starting on August 18, and in the future, the club will have at least one evening meeting per month in an effort to bring all members of the club together.

The first evening meeting will be a potluck dinner at the home of Pete & Parri Van Dyke, 1336 Rosearden Drive, at 6:30 p.m. The Van Dykes will provide pulled pork and other members are asked to bring a side dish or dessert. The program will be our president, Bryce Baker, who will talk about his journey through Rotary and our goals and visions for the 2021-22 Rotary Year.

Online Dues Payments: Our club is now equipped to take dues payments online! We can now process credit card or debit card payments for quarterly dues. Information on how to pay online was sent out with the quarterly billing that went out earlier in July.

With the transition to billing with Quickbooks, some members may not have received their quarterly invoice. If you did not, please contact treasurer Lucas Welliver.

FGHS Community Food Pantry: Our club’s support for the Forest Grove High School Food Pantry continues. Thanks to its partnership with the Oregon Food Bank, food donations are still welcome but are of less need at this time. Of need, however, are toiletries and hygiene products as well as household cleaning materials. Our club is currently contributing $1,000 per month of toiletry items, cleaning supplies and feminine hygiene products.

Distribution events for these items take place on the first Monday of each month. If you are interested in assisting with the next distribution event, please contact Michael Yakos.

The Food Pantry is open on Mondays from 2- 4 p.m. Donations are accepted on-site on Mondays from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

For information on the Food Pantry, please contact Brian Burke, bburke@fgsd.k12.or.us. If you wish to make a cash donation to the pantry, Click Here.

Additionally, Rotarian Gwen Hullinger has put together an Amazon wish list of items that can be purchased and donated. Click Here To View That List.

Rotary Phone Tree: Keep up the good work on the Rotary phone tree, helping to check in our members and keep them up to date on the happenings in the club. If you have questions about the phone tree, or if your information on the Phone Tree is not correct, contact Paul Waterstreet.

The goal of the phone tree is to reach out and check on every member of the club to make sure they are doing all right and to provide updates on club announcements and activities (Hint: You have a great list to draw from here). The plan is for the tree to be activated every Tuesday. The idea is that for each person to call the next one on the list. The last person on the list should call the team captain to make sure the list is complete.

Past Programs: Did you miss a meeting or want to go back and check out a program again? Most of our programs since May 2020 are archived on our club’s YouTube page. Visit https://bit.ly/fgrotaryprograms.

Around District 5100
District 5100 Peacebuilder Committee Update (by Mike Caruso): As we begin our new Rotary Year, our Peacebuilding efforts continue right along with Rotary International’s now seven Areas of Focus what with the addition of the environment! This to me only enhances the understanding that all of Rotary’s Areas of Focus fall under the umbrella of the Peace Area of Focus.

While we remain in a holding pattern regarding our Peace Fellow applicants whom our district recommended to be considered for the Rotary Peace Fellowship until the committee makes its decisions in Evanston in October, our District 5100 Peacebuilder Clubs continue to move forward in promoting and educating wherever and whenever we can in the field of peace.

Our first bi-monthly Peacebuilder Clubs Meeting will be held on Thursday, July 29, as we learn more about what is happening in the Peace field from Rotary International peace coordinator, Dr. Fergal McCarthy. Our keynote speaker for our July meeting will be Canadian Rotarian Helen Peacock. I had the opportunity to hear her speak virtually a couple of months ago at the Zoom meeting of the Rotary Club of St. Petersburg, Russia and she gave a spell-binding presentation about the challenges our world is and has been encountering for quite some time regarding the possibility of nuclear war. We will also be offering for purchase, polo shirts, tee shirts and hats with our new Peacebuilder Clubs logo embroidered or screen-printed on the apparel.

In other areas, our Peace Poles program continues to grow and it’s looking more and more like a certainty that under the direction of Rotarian and past AG Larry Strober that our goal of 100 more Peace Poles planted by the International Day of Peace on Sept. 21 will become a reality.

Additionally, Rotarian Natalya Verdyan from the Rotary Club of Beaverton is continuing with her efforts to increase the number of Peace Poles planted and Peacebuilder Clubs joining our ranks on the other side of the world. Kudos, Natalya, on your part as our district representative of the Russia-USA ICC in helping convince the RC of Vladivostok, Russia in becoming the first Peacebuilder Club in that country!

As we are able to meet in person finally, after so many difficult months, we are expecting many of our postponed Peace programs and projects to be revived and to continue to grow at an even greater level. Here’s to renewed hope and expectation for an incredibly successful and enjoyable Rotary year of Peace and productivity!

Around Rotary International
Rotary Launches New Membership Recognition Program: To recognize those who have demonstrated extraordinary commitment and success in growing our membership, we have launched a new recognition program. The Membership Society for New Member Sponsors is a virtual gallery for those members who have sponsored 25 or more new members. Members can achieve different tiers of recognition as they continue to sponsor more members.

The recognition levels are:

• Bronze Level: Sponsored 25-29 members
• Silver Level: Sponsored 30-49 members
• Gold Level: Sponsored 50-74 members
• Platinum Level: Sponsored 75+ members

To be included in the Membership Society, an individual has to have sponsored 25 or more new members, and have reported those sponsorships to Rotary. New member sponsorship can only be between active members in the same club, and does not include charter members of a new club.

Last Week’s Program: Keith Horman, Forest Grove Light & Power

Click Here To Watch The Complete Program

Recap Courtesy Of Michael Yakos

Keith Horman from Forest Grove Light and Power gave an update to the club in our July 21 noon meeting. Keith has a long history working in the power industry starting off in South Dakota, then moving to California and finally transferring to Forest Grove in 1994.

As a preferred customer of the Bonneville Power Administration, Forest Grove has relatively inexpensive and stable power supply for many years. Forest Grove Light and Power has invested in significant improvements for our community over the last 10 years including upgrades to our electrical sub-station and transformer infrastructure. Some of the improvements included modernizing electrical equipment, which had been installed in the 1950s.

Recent focus has centered on creating a connection ring around Forest Grove to allow for load balancing across the various substations. In particular, club members may have noticed some of the work on Forest Gale Drive near Tom McCall to connect the Thatcher to Filbert substation, which will help stabilize power on the west side of town.

In addition to these major improvements, Forest Grove Light and Power has ongoing smaller scale projects such as converting nearly 2,000 street lamps to LED bulbs and installing more electric vehicle charging stations. They are currently forecasting to have all Forest Grove street lamps on LEDs by the end of this summer, reducing energy consumption by roughly 50 percent.

Forest Grove Light and Power also has crews, which trim tree branches all year to help mitigate the risk of impacting power lines and causing disruptions to customers.

Keith also mentioned that Forest Grove customers have the option to buy “Green Power” to help fund renewable energy options such as wind and solar. In the future, as the Portland metro area grows, hydroelectric power from the Bonneville Power Administration alone will not meet the demand. Forest Grove Light and Power is tied into discussions relating to additional power generating sources to meet the region’s future needs.

Club Calendar
All Meetings Are On Zoom Unless Noted

Wed., July 28: Weekly Meeting, Noon
Program: Celeste Goulding, Second Home

Wed., Aug. 4: Weekly Meeting, Noon
Program: Narce Rodriguez, Pacific University Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Thurs., Aug. 5: Executive Board Meeting, 7 a.m.

Wed., Aug. 11: Weekly Meeting & Golf Tournament, Noon
Sunset Grove Golf Course, 41615 NW Osterman Rd., Forest Grove
RSVP to Tim Schauermann for lunch and golf.