Prayer. Almighty God, as we pause in prayer at the outset of this meeting, help us to realize the significance of these brief moments as a preface to our time together. Such are the demands upon us in life and work, and such are the blessings in both, that we need and appreciate this planned opportunity to reverently give thanks, and reiterate our need for fresh inspiration and renewed strength.
Accept our gratitude for food and other gifts lavished upon us. Amen.
The following is from Matt Monsour, Club Director - Service Projects:
"Mark your calendars in a different way for Tuesday, April 16.
This is the date for our Club’s annual blood drive. On that date the Mississippi Blood Services “BUS” will be parked in front of The Rickhouse to make it convenient for us to make a blood donation. The “Bus” will be there from 9AM to 3 PM .
We will not have a regular meeting or speaker that day. The Rickhouse will have box lunches available starting at 10 AM. Members who donate before lunch can take their box lunch with them or eat it at The Rickhouse.
Not having a normal meeting and program creates an opportunity to come at your normal Tuesday noon meeting time and have an expanded time of unstructured fellowship. A blood donation is encouraged if you can donate, but certainly not required.
Since the Blood Drive is a club service project every member who donates or attempts to donate will receive a makeup attendance credit in addition to being marked present for our Tuesday meeting on the 16th.
For those who can donate, starting Tuesday, April 2, there will be a signup sheet on the table so you can schedule a time to donate that best fits your schedule."
Birthdays And Anniversaries.
Birthdays:
Rob Whitley April 02
Anna Powers April 05
Suzy Tubb April 05
Anniversaries
Rich Sun & Phyllis Hollenbeck April 05
Dorsey & Susan Carson April 07
Membership Anniversaries
None
This week’s Rotary Foundation Thought is about Rotary’s Disaster Recovery
efforts.
Eladio Montalvo faced a stark choice: risk drowning in his one-story home or climb through a window into the house next door. It was under construction but had a second floor where he could escape the rising floodwaters. He boosted his dog through and scrambled in after him. The two huddled inside an upstairs bathroom for 22 hours while Hurricane Maria raged over Puerto Rico. With 155 mph winds and torrential rains, Maria was the strongest hurricane to hit the island in more than 80 years.
After the storm, Montalvo went out to see what was left of the home he had lived in since 1958. The walls were standing, but the water inside had risen chest-high. Everything was destroyed. Without any family nearby, he had nowhere to go. He moved into his car.
“But after the storm came the calm,” he says. “Good people came.”
Rivera greets Eladio Montalvo, who was forced to live in his car before the Mayagüez club helped him rebuild his home.
Faustino Rivera pats Montalvo affectionately on the shoulder. It’s September 2018, a year since Hurricane Maria, and Rivera and several other members of the Rotary Club of Mayagüez have stopped by to visit. Montalvo lives in a fishing town called El Maní outside the city of Mayagüez on the island’s west coast. He invites his guests inside to see the progress he has made adding a shower to his bathroom. There’s a pile of tiles that he plans to lay soon, and he has started painting the walls a light shade of blue. The home is neatly but sparsely furnished: a bed, a TV, and a few plastic bins, including one labeled camisas that has shirts and shorts tucked inside.
Christopher F. “Chris” Brantley was inducted into the Rotary Club of North Jackson at the Club’s March 26, 2019, meeting. Chris is the son of Club member Chris Brantley, who proposed him for membership. He is a Trust officer with Trustmark Bank and is Vice President/ President-Elect of the Estate Planning Council of Mississippi. He is a graduate of the University of Mississippi. He and his wife, Reynolds, have one son, George, and live in Northeast Jackson. Chris (center) is shown in the following photo with his father (right) and his sponsor, Past President Kevin Russell (left).
Christina Dent, founder of End it for Good, a non-profit dedicated to ending the "War on Drugs", spoke to the Rotary Club of North Jackson at the Club’s March 26, 2019, meeting. Ms. Dent is the daughter-in-law of Club member Tommy Dent and the wife of former Club member Thomas Dent who spoke to the Club earlier in March about Child Protective Services. She is also the mother of three children and is a self-professed Conservative Christian. She graduated from Belhaven University with a degree in Bible Studies.
The essence of her talk is that the “War on Drugs” being conducted by our country is a dismal failure like its predecessor action the passage of the Prohibition of Alcohol. She said that she came to this conclusion only after extensively studying the results of the "War on Drugs." She began that study as a strong proponent of the "War on Drugs", but her position was changed as a result of those studies.
Both prohibitions have only succeeded in lowering the quality of the products they have made illegal and made both consumers and vendors of the products criminals. She cited the experience of Portugal which eliminated the criminalization of drug use. The result was a significant reduction in deaths due to drug use and in the use of the drugs and in drug-related crimes. Both injection drug use and addiction decreased significantly. In addition, the decriminalization of drugs in Portugal resulted in 6 drug overdose deaths per million people compared to 185 drug overdose deaths per million in the US.
Additionally, Portugal has been able to reduce its enforcement effort to the point that 90% of the cost is now focused on treatment and prevention compared with the US where 90% of the cost is in enforcement and 10% is for treatment and prevention.
Ms. Dent presented a Vicious Circle that exists in the US now where drug use leads to incarceration, disconnection from family and society, and ultimately to lifelong employment difficulty and a traumatic life. She cited the figures that Mississippi now has 3807 nonviolent offenders imprisoned at an annual cost of $68 million annually. Her bottom line was that if she wanted to design a system to keep addiction going on a massive scale, she would design the present War on Drugs.
We thank Ms. Dent for her presentation and for her work on behalf of Mississippi. She is shown in the following photo with her father-in-law Club member Tommy Dent and Club President Anna Powers (right).
JPD officers Longino and Jefferson were honored as the Pct. 4 Officers of the Quarter by the Rotary Club of North Jackson at the Club’s March 19, 2019, meeting. They were honored for their pursuit and capture of three culprits that robbed a gasoline station/ convenience store in Northeast Jackson. The culprits fired on the officers who returned the fire and captured them.
Officers Longino (2nd from left) and Jefferson are shown with Club Past President Edley Jones (left) who chairs the Club’s Pct. 4 Officer of the Quarter Committee and Rotarian Steven O’Neill (right)in the following photo
Officers Longino and Jefferson are shown with Officer Longino’s mother Betty Longino in the next photo.
We thank them for their service to the citizens of Jackson and congratulate them on their recognition.
Mr. Leland Speed founder, former chairman, and CEO of EastGroup Properties, a real estate investment organization with in excess of $1.0 billion in assets, and former Executive director of the Mississippi Development Authority spoke to the Rotary Club of North Jackson about charter schools at the Club’s March 19, 2019 meeting. He described the success of charter schools in increasing test scores, improving students’ behavior, and providing students with life skills. He also discussed the value of keeping fathers in homes to mold young people. He is shown preceding his talk with Club Past President Wyatt Emmerich, who introduced him and with Club Vice President and President-Elect Greg Campbell following his talk. We thank Mr. Speed for his talk and for his contributions to the State of Mississippi and its citizens.
Greg Campbell, Club Vice President, and President-Elect spoke to the Rotary Club of North Jackson about his January trip to Guadalajara, Mexico as part of a District 6820 service project. He showed photos of the children they assisted, the hospital and organizations they served, and of the City of Guadalajara. His key point that trips like this are the reason Rotary exists, to serve others. He is already planning to return on the next service trip in February 2020. He also said that our club should host a Rotary Exchange student in 2020. Greg is shown in the following photo with Club President Anna Powers following his presentation.
We thank Greg for his presentation, for his passionate service to others, and for his service to our club.
At the March 5, 2019, meeting of the Rotary Club of North Jackson, Club Executive Secretary-Treasurer Don Roberts announced that the Club's Board of Directors has established the "Joe Harris Service Above Self Award" in honor of Long-time club member Joe Harris who joined the club in its charter year of 1971 and has achieved perfect attendance for those 47 years, including serving as President of the Club for the 1977-1978 Rotary Year. Additionally, he has served as Chair of the Club's Foundation Committee for 35 years during which period Club members contributed more than $550,000 to the Rotary Foundation. Mr. Harris, himself achieved multiple recognitions as a Benefactor, Multiple Paul Harris Fellow, and Major Donor to the Foundation. The purpose of the award is to recognize Mr. Harris' contributions and service and to motivate and encourage Club members to serve the community, the Club, and the Foundation. The minimum criterion for receiving the award is to achieve status as a Paul Harris Fellow Sustaining Member.
The Club is delighted to establish this award and to recognize the contributions Mr. Harris has made to Rotary and the community. We thank him for his many years of faithful service!
