Los Banos Rotary Club History
Cowlift Chairman Reviews Operations

Joe E. Silva, who served as local chairman for "Operation Cowlift" last spring in the drive to help re-establish some of the dairymen and farmers in the Yuba City area who were made destitute by the December floods, reviewed the project for members of the Los Banos Rotary Club at their luncheon meeting Tuesday noon.

Stating that the job of soliciting replacement dairy stock and money for the project represented "three weeks of hard work and sweat that was simply repaid by the appreciative letters received from the persons to whom the stock was given," Silva told how nearly fifty head of cattle were contributed by local dairymen, farmers and businessmen, loaded into a truck and taken to Yuba City, where the county farm advisor and community officials joined in distributing them equally among some ten or twelve families who were in the most dire need, and whose own dairies, homes, barns and all possessions had been destroyed and lost by the flood.

He also reviewed some of the havoc wrought in that area, of families made homeless, of lifetime savings wiped away in a few hours. "I came home from Yuba City," he said "feeling like the richest man in the world in the knowledge that my own home, family and possessions were still safe and sound."
Americo Marciochi, local dairyman who served with Silva in the project, showed motion pictures taken of the local cattle donation drive, the trip to Yuba City, scenes of some of the recipients as they received the cattle and in at least some degree saw new hope from their destitution. The film also included numerous flood scenes, of houses wrecked and floated away, of orchards washed out or covered with silt and debris, and of the general havoc wrought as the surging Sacramento River broke out of its banks and surged through the countryside in a wall of water that at times was 12 feet high.
The two men were introduced to the Rotarians by Ed Evans, manager of the Bank of America, who in his introduction of Silva paid high tribute to his personal effort put forth to make the project outstandingly successful.

In other Rotary business President Otto Zentner announced that the annual dinner honoring the 1956 Tiger football team was tentatively set for December 4, with Randall Fawcett as general chairman.

November 9, 1956

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