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The meeting was called to order by President Lisa Smith. David Marvin gave an eloquent invocation reminding us to think about the beauty of this chilly spring day, Rotary friends and about the mentorship and friendship of our recently departed Rotarian Dr. Curt Leichty. Our patriotic song, accompanied on the piano by John Dale Smith, was the Star Spangled Banner. David Trumpie did the honors with the microphone as Rotarians introduced their numerous guests.
Diane Sanborn gave the Remembrance Committee’s report. Past President Susie Carter’s mother passed away last week. Services have already been held. President Lisa brought our attention to handouts on the table with two dates to remember:
FRIDAY, JUNE 17, Lansing Rotary’s Centennial Dinner with Special Entertainment. 6 – 9 pm at the Lansing Center. $30 per person. (This replaces the June 17 lunch meeting.)
THURSDAY, JUNE 23, Lansing Rotary’s Club Meeting with Rotary International President, 11:30 am – 1:30 pm at the Lansing Center. (This replaces the June 24 lunch meeting.)
Lisa also congratulated Glen Granger for receiving the United Way Walter A. Campbell Award and Jim McGillicuddy for being inducted into the Sparrow Hospital’s Physicians Hall of Fame on Aril 24th. New Rotarian Kent Conan received his new member badge. Congratulations and welcome to Kent!
Dan Aylward brought our attention to the Rotarian Magazine’s “We’re this close” campaign to finish the job Rotary started of wiping out polio everywhere in the world. One way of doing our part is to contribute, before the end of April, to the Paul Harris fund of Rotary International. Our contributions go toward the Polio Plus campaign, other international campaigns, and also do good things in local communities. Please do your part and contribute.
President Lisa announced a new member orientation meeting Wednesday, April 27, 3:30 – 5 pm at the Michigan Chamber of Commerce Offices.
Ken Beachler introduced our special music. Peter Ecklund is one of “talented teenagers” in this area. Peter received a full scholarship to the University of Michigan to study bassoon next fall after he completes his senior year at Haslett High School. Peter played two movements from the German classical composer Carl Maria von Weber’s Concerto for Bassoon in F Major. Peter was wonderful. His playing of this difficult double reed instrument spanned several octaves to make amazingly beautiful music. The first movement was melodious, then the second movement he played was very playful. Wikipedia says of it, “The final movement returns to F major and is a lighthearted rondo in 2/4 time. The main theme is impish and catchy, which makes it easy to identify when it appears many times later in the movement.” Thank you Peter and the Special Music Committee.
Jack Davis, sitting in for Dr. Mike Clark who was in Chicago for the birth of his latest grandchild, told us that David Thomas, Director of Michigan State University Basketball Operations not only played on the 2000 MSU National Championship team, he was an assistant manager of basketball in 2002 and ran several MSU clinics. He lives in East Lansing with his wife and children. Jack also introduced Brad Lunsford who is now in his 9th year in football operations at MSU. Brad’s career also started at MSU but then took him to Delaware State, then brought him back to MSU to marry his fiancée, and start him up the career ladder to his current position of Director of Executive Football Operations.
Brad spoke first. 16 years ago Brad received a scholarship award from the Rotary Club of Rockwood, Michigan in the downriver area of Detroit. He was in the Rotaract club. Both young men see their roles as doing everything possible so their coaches could concentrate on coaching. Both are in charge of travel, food services, calendars, and numerous other things. Both are also responsible for comp football and basketball tickets.
David “D.T.” Thomas is originally from Brantford, Ontario. He was recruited to MSU in 1996 by Tom Izzo. MSU was the fourth of his “allowed” five official campus visits. He never took the fifth visit because he was certain that MSU was the place for him. After three Final Fours, including that 2000 National Championship year, the greatest thing for D.T. was the brotherhood and bonding of his teammates. After playing nine years in Australia (Summer in Australia, then returning to summer in the U.S. for nine years was enjoyable.) David also played on the Canadian National Team for three years. He returned to start a car wash business with his former teammate and brother-in-law (they married sisters) Andre Hutson. They learned the challenges of running a small business for the next three years before stepping away from it. After that D.T. took a position as a MSU Federal Credit Union manager for three years.
It all came together in D.T.’s current job as Director of MSU Men’s Basketball Operations. Just today he had to hire 85 employees for summer camps. There are constant similarities to running a small business. Both men handle big banquets, personnel, issues with student athletes before they get to the level of the coaches, as well as tricky travel arrangements. An athlete only has to “Eat this. Go there. Do these things.” These directors of operations are responsible for the “this, there, and ‘these things’”
A favorite quote and text of D.T.’s is “Make sure you do something today that your future self will thank you for.” Someone told him this once and he is grateful to have heard that advice. Rotarians had lots of good questions.
Q. How many of the MSU sports have people in positions like yours? A. Only men’s football, basketball, hockey and volleyball and women’s basketball and volleyball. All the rest have coaches who have to do their coaching job and do operations jobs on top of it. Brad said he was taken aback at the huge jobs that people like the women’s track coaches and others have to perform.
Q. Have you ever left an athlete behind on a trip? A. Not an athlete. But we’ve left a staff member when Coach Dantonio said, “Close the door and head out.” He isn’t one to want to sit around and wait when it’s time to go.
Q. What’s you biggest challenge or problem? A. David said that he had no idea, when he started, just how global the MSU basketball “brand” is. But his biggest challenge is definitely travel. You can make careful arrangements but ultimately “it’s out of our hands.” They’ve had charter air service companies call at the last minute with delays. Brad said the football team’s flying in and out to play Rutgers for the first time was a challenge because their air service company said they couldn’t fly them out of Newark until a day after they were scheduled to leave because the plane needed a part. Many hasty calls later, at four in the morning, their original hotel got them worked back in and Coach Dantonio helped pass out bed linens to the 175 people who planned to fly home after the game, so they could make up their beds and get a few hours’ sleep.
Q. Is there a problem with your athletes breaking training? A. Not much at all. “We run our program on discipline.” David said 21 years of Coach Izzo in charge has led to former players returning and laying it out for new players saying, “This is how you behave.” “We only have a few knuckleheads and they only do something once.”
Q. How do you handle “comp tickets” since so many people want them or feel entitled to them? A. “Friends of Tom” or “F.O.T’s” do call. He’s an out-going guy who says, “Just call D.T. he’ll hook you up.” But he forgets to tell David that he told the people that. It’s been a learning process but it usually works out.
Q. How do I get my high school athlete recognized by colleges? A. It isn’t high school teams so much these days. Brad says that coaches use visits to AAU games to see new talent.
President Lisa thanked our speakers, gave them Four Way Test coins, and told them about the Bio Sand Filter donations in their names to get pure water to people in underdeveloped areas in the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Next week we’re at the Lansing Center again when the speaker will be Thomas Bres, Senior Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer of Sparrow Health Systems. We were adjourned at 1:30.
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Since January 2014 Tom Bres has been the Senior Vice President, Chief Administrative Officer for Sparrow Health Systems. Tom joined Sparrow in 2008 and launched an aggressive transformation technology upon his arrival. 
