Los Banos Rotary Club History
Rotary Gets A ****Rating

Last Tuesday I attended my first Rotary Meeting. I had been invited by Debbie Furnish to be one of the three guest judges at the Rotary High School Speech.
Debbie was the organizer of the Annual event which has local high school students compete in the very important skill of speech making. As a former High School Drama teacher I respect the importance of teaching the skills of poise under pressure, organization of thoughts and ability to concisely express ones ideas.

Joining me in the difficult task of judging were Rich Howard and Tom May.
The topic of this year’s contest was the theme of Consistency, Credibility and Continuity.

The six participating students all made very strong speeches and I was impressed with each one of their approaches.

The choice of winners of a competition of this kind is always difficult but the three winners were third place winning $50 Tiffany Terry, second place winning $75 was Nathan Sahla and winning first and $100 and a chance to move on to Gustine for the next level of competition was Christine Bryant. Bryant displayed a great sense of connection with her audience and had a good handle on her topic. I am very confident that she will go on to represent Los Banos in a manner to make us all proud.

The president of Rotary, Colleen Menefee, managed the meeting with a sense of humor while still in full control of the meeting which went smoothly (and on time). The meeting seemed to display a good sense of fellowship between members and spoke well for the Rotary organization. And it was a nice lunch.

January 22, 2000

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