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Better late than never, so my apologies to Cathy! We were called to order by President Smith who takes to the podium like a duck to water. Courtney Milbrook gave the invocation and called music to mind at every turn of the prayer. John Dale Smith rocked out God Bless America and we “nailed it.”
A few guests made their way to the Lansing Country Club and were introduced before we were informed that Ned Legg is at The Willows (sounds like a reference to “The Meadows” from the movie So I Married an Axe Murderer). I’m hoping Ned’ll regale us with tales of The Willows the same way he’s repeatedly regaled us with tales of Japan. (Too much? Probably, but Ned could use the laugh). Room 107, 3500 Coolidge Road in East Lansing. We were sad to hear that Rick Foster’s beloved Gretchen passed away this past week. When we know of service arrangements, we’ll let you know. And, we forgot to honor Umakanth Govinidarijan (I call him Umakanth Govinidarijan for short) for his Paul Harris Award. Some how his name slipped off the list. Red Badges were presented to Tony Conley and Jamie Fitzpatrick (she’s a she, so this increases our male/female ratio significantly and at this rate, we’ll be at 50/50 by the year 2042). Don’t forget to fill out your Rotary Reflections form so that the club history will have more than just one from Jim McGillicuddy and me.
Michael Rhodes introduced us to our speaker of the day, James Forger, Dean of the College of Music at MSU. This guy can talk music, I mean, like the world’s fastest rapper’s got nothing on me type of talking fast. We were treated to a dizzying array of statistics and facts about the MSU Department of Music (1919), School of Music (1984) and College of Music (2007). The Cook Recital Hall was a 1939 WPA project that enjoyed a recent $5 million renovation (signature gift from Byron and Dee Cook, Byron with ties to last week’s presentation on Michigan Oil and Gas). The College of Music is in the middle of a $30 million capital campaign to support scholarship, faculty, programs and research. For the low, low price of $8,000,000.00 (less if you pay in cash), you can name the new addition! Competition to keep faculty from being poached by other universities is fierce and MSU has successfully warded off a number of faculty raids. We were treated to special music by Schyler Sheltrown, a Soprano who was accompanied by Deborah Moriarty on the piano. They took us on a Marco Poloesque journey from Amorisi by Donaudy (Italian) to the far East with a Chinese number, FeiTian, which is the goddess of something (no offense Goddess, but I didn’t catch your last name). Like most operas, I didn’t understand a word, but there was no way you could have slept through this performance. The takeaway quote of the day was “The human spirit thrives on music.” Great program, stunningly spectacular summer day in Michigan and great fellowship rounded out the day as President Lisa Smith rang the bell and sent us on our way.
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Vicki Hamilton-Allen is Executive Director of Habitat for Humanity Lansing. She received her B.A. degree in Political Science from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada and her MBA with a concentration in Change Management from Ferris State University. Vicki grew up in Montreal, Canada and moved to England after completing university. She lived there for the next 18 years. In the UK Vicki served as a consultant for Britain’s foremost house builders where she acquired much of her property development knowledge. She then went on to become a Higher Executive Officer for the British Government, specifically for the Department of Education. When arriving in the USA 4 years ago, Vicki chose to work in the non-profit sector initially with the American Red Cross. With her construction experience and non-profit experience it seems that working for Habitat was the natural segue in her career.