Aloha kākou,

This week, as a follow-up to the Memorial Day holiday weekend, we heard from Major General (Ret.) Suzanne Vares-Lum, Director of the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies at our most recent regular meeting discussing the U.S. military in the Pacific.  It was an interesting topic, and I received a number of positive comments.  Thanks to Dave Shanahan for arranging this opportunity.  As a special treat, I was able to convince my son Nicholas (currently home from college) to wake up early enough to join me for the meeting.  He and I sat at a table between Tom Coyne and our newest member – inducted during that meeting – Adam Bogucki (pronounced “buh-goose-key”, for those following along at home) and his sponsor Ian Wetherell. Of course, Tom used the opportunity to encourage Nic to join us for the Beerfest at the end of June.  I will also take this opportunity to do the same for all of you: Sign up to join us at the Beerfest on June 27!

Following our regular meeting, we had our monthly meeting of the Board of Directors.  Among the several topics touched upon, we had a lengthy discussion about the status of the Club as far as membership and finances.  As I have discussed with a number of you in the past, our Club maintains a certain level of “service” for our own members, in addition to the actual service projects we support in the community.  This includes the quality of our lunches and the venue, as well as the number of Club activities that our paid administrator (and Club member) Lee LaBrash does for us that would otherwise fall to volunteer members.  As you can probably imagine, these services require a greater financial commitment than is expected from many other Rotary Clubs on Oahu and elsewhere, but that is part of our character as a Club.  The reason I raise this here is that I want everyone to be aware that we will need to rethink the way in which we share the cost of our Club’s operations across all members, especially those who do not regularly attend our meetings, occasionally meaning that we do not meet our minimum commitment.  Look for more on this in the closing weeks of my term.

Finally, I want to express my appreciation to everyone who has signed up for our Club Assembly meeting this coming Tuesday, June 2, especially those who signed up after my last plea for more to do so.  We now comfortably have a quorum under which we can conduct Club and Foundation business that will require a vote to ratify, and I thank you all for that.  Our agenda for the Assembly will include a status update on the Foundation’s Service above Self campaign, a report on Club membership and finances of the Club operations, an in-depth discussion of the Coke & Lawrence fund including the launch of its donation campaign and a status report on the pilot year of the Don Anderson Youth Leadership Fellows program. I am looking forward to it.

Mahalo nui loa,

Brian Dunkel

President

The Rotary Club of Honolulu