Rotary Club of Santa Monica

"COLOR YOUR LIFE WITH ROTARY"

Rota-Monica

ISSUE NO. 43 JUNE 8, 2001 OUR 80^th YEAR

http://RotaryClubofSantaMonica.org

FROM SANTA MONICA’S OLDEST FAMILY

Almost every old-time Santa Monican knows a story or two about Ysidro (Sid) Reyes, our speaker this Friday. Here’s one story.

In the 1950s when polio was a world scourge, a boy was carried into the Kabat-Kaiser Clinic near the beach. He was 12-year-old Joel Bryant. His parents were in government service in the Philippines. They sent him to Kabat-Kaiser but couldn’t quit work to be with him.

He arrived alone, with no desire to live. He could move only his fingers. One day a 14-year-old named Del Fedderman, visiting his own brother at the clinic, drew Joel into talk. “I’m in a Scout troop,” Del said. “Will you join, if we can get you to the meetings?” Joel said okay.

Sid Reyes heard of this. He owned an ambulance service. He provided an ambulance and attendants to transport Joel to and from Scout meetings weekly. The troop made Joel its instructor and examiner in Morse code, a Scout requirement, which he could send with a buzzer the troop provided. So Joel quickly learned Morse, and took a unique role in the troop.

At meetings he soon found he was moving a bit. In months he was in a wheelchair. Eventually he went through Samohi and UCLA, then on to a career with a real estate firm. He thanked Sid for changing his life.

The Reyes family has been part of Santa Monica history since 1838, when Sid’s great-great-grandfather received a Spanish land grant for 400 acres of what is now Pacific Palisades, Santa Monica Canyon, and Santa Monica. Sid has lived here all his life. His first jobs were for the Evening Outlook. When he was 25 he helped start the California Ambulance Service, which now transports about 1,000 people a month. During World War II he served in the South Pacific with the Navy medical corps.

The list of organizations in which Sid has been active include the National Conference of Christians and Jews, the Catholic Youth Organization, the Chamber of Commerce, Kiwanis Club, American Cancer Society, American Red Cross, Boy Scouts, Boys and Girls Club, and a bunch of others.

He helped found the Santa Monica Historical Society. He’ll tell us a bit about our town’s history.

I wish I could write a personal note of thanks to each of you. Since that isn’t possible, I’d like to take this means of telling everyone how deeply I appreciated the lovely party on May 18, as well as all the personal remembrances. For Ole as well as for me, it was truly a highlight of our lifetime.

Bill Pollock, our vice-president in 1957-58 and our president in 1962-63, passed away peacefully on May 22 while working at home in his garden.

Most of our present members have joined the club in the years since Bill retired from it. But many knew him through other organizations in which he was active, especially on the board of the Community Chest.

Many who had been Boy Scouts remembered him from the summers when he spent his vacation as camp doctor at Emerald Bay, the Scout camp on Catalina Island. Bill was a jovial, chatty type who got along well with Scouts (even the few sick or injured ones), perhaps because he was an Eagle Scout himself. At home he was a first aid merit badge counselor.

He was a cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of UCLA, earned his doctorate at Harvard, saw wartime service as a second lieutenant, then completed his residency in general surgery at University of California, San Francisco.

Bill entered private surgical practice in Santa Monica in 1948. He served on the senior surgical staff at St. John’s, and as chief of surgery in 1961-62. He also served as president or chairman of five different medical associations.

Many members were puzzled, at a recent lunch meeting, to find a bulky set of stapled pages at every member’s place. It turned out to be the club’s manual of policies and procedures, which many of us didn’t even know existed. Was some sort of big change in progress?

Not really. To allay the puzzlement, Past President Dick Rice wrote a statement to explain. Here it is:

As our club moves into its 80^th year it continues to undergo evolution and growth, built on tradition and our club’s own special way of doing things. In recent years it has become evident that some of these traditions and club policies have become blurred, unwittingly altered, or even completely forgotten and lost because they have usually been handed down verbally from one administration to another, or sometimes hidden away in board minutes that have been carefully kept, but then forgotten and stored. Too much of the way we have done things have depended on someone’s recollection of “how we did it a few years ago.”

The Policies and Procedures Manual was created to put at the board’s and the club members’ fingertips the essentials of how our club addresses a multitude of issues not covered in the club’s constitution or bylaws. Because our club is ever-changing, this manual is structured so that it can be changed by a simple action of the board of directors at any of their meetings. In fact, one of the charges to boards in the future will be to see to it that actions they take that create changes in any of our club’s policies or procedures are added to the manual.

Because this manual contains many things of interest that apply to every member (such as how to propose a new member, rules concerning leaves of absence, use of club roster for solicitation purposes, etc.), copies of the manual were handed out at a recent lunch meeting. If you were absent that day and have not yet received a copy in the mail, please let Barbara Hopper know at the next meeting you attend, or call her at (310) 434-9992.

	June 15th -- Craft talks
	June 22nd -- This will be an evening meeting. Held at the Riviera, it will be the dethroning of John Lehne and the enthroning of Hal Quigley. Invitation cards were mailed out with last week’s Rota-Monica. This should be a great party. Plan to be there.