Rotary Club of Santa Monica

"COLOR YOUR LIFE WITH ROTARY"

Rota-Monica

 

ISSUE NO. 15                                OCTOBER 20, 2000                             OUR 79th  YEAR

http://RotaryClubofSantaMonica.org 

This Friday’s Craft Talk:

 

     HOW JIM CAYTON CLIMBED AND LIVED HAPPILY AFTER

 

            Sixty-three years ago a young man named R. James Cayton invented a new kind of vertical window blind and went into business manufacturing it. He spent the following forty-four years as president of his own company, building a factory at Eleventh & Colorado, opening twenty-one offices around the country, and building up an organization that eventually employed 700 people. 

            He joined our Rotary club in 1967, served as president in 1976-77, and sold his business in 1982. Since then he and his wife Lucille have spent five months of each year travelling. He always brings back a photographic record that illustrates a notable half-hour talk for one of our club meetings. 

He’ll give us a “craft talk” at this Friday’s meeting, in accordance with our new arrangement that calls for talks not only by new members but also, occasionally, by one of our old-timers who may not be well-acquainted with most of the current membership. Nobody, as far as we know, has laid down any rules about the content of a Rotary craft talk except that it should be closely connected with the speaker’s life. If Jim chooses to tell us some of the business crafts that helped him build a notable success story, that will be illuminating. 

He probably won’t mention that one reason he looks so trim is that he swims laps regularly in the pool at his home on Alta Mura Road – nor that the club fined him $1,125 (by prearrangement) for selling his company, LouverDrape. Whatever he decides to tell us about his life, it should be a story full of achievement. 

 

COMING UP FOR US

 

October 27 – “Prostate Cancer” by Dr. Mark Scholz

October 28 – (Saturday) Paul Harris Foundation Dinner, Westin Hotel LAX

November 3 – “Character Counts” by Michael Josephson Institute of Ethics

November 7 – (Tuesday) Rotary Golf Tournament, Sterling Hills

November 10 – Veterans’ Day

November 17 – Big Game Day, UCLA/USC

November 24 – DARK (Thanksgiving)

 

FBI = FINED BECAUSE INDUSTRIOUS?

 

               Alonzo Hill, our friendly and smiling FBI agent, was honored on October 6th for attending the Olympic Games in Sydney. He presented an Olympic commemorative coin to President John as a token of friendship and fraternal love. There was no way to consider this a friendly bribe, was there? At any rate we thank Alonzo for the $50 fine he paid. We are happy that he could go to the Games, and happy to welcome him back. Wait! I’ve just learned that President John rescinded the fine when he realized the tremendous dollar value of the commemorative coin.

 

A FINE FOR A FINE LADY

 

                The world’s first lady Rotarian, our Esther Johnson, was verbally honored by President John. She well deserved his eloquence, as always. John apparently was reluctant to assess a fine, but he shouldn’t play favorites. Therefore, as one of her thirteen sponsors in 1986, I fine myself $100 in her honor. Thank you Esther for the pleasure of your company so many times, and for the countless hours you’ve spent keeping the club running smoothly.

   --- Lionel Ruhman

 

SOME FACTS WE DIDN’T KNOW

 

    Next time we donate to Rotary, which spends a lot on charities abroad, here’s some information just disclosed by the World Bank: 

Up to half the children in sub-Saharan Africa are malnourished. One-fifth die before the age of five. 

Almost half of the six billion people who inhabit the earth live on less than two dollars a day. 

Dozens of countries spend more paying interest due on loans from wealthy foreigners than on hospitals and schools. Many of the governments that took out these loans no longer exist, but their successors keep up the interest payments. Last year the governments of the creditor nations agreed to write off some debts, with the money saved going to poverty-reduction payments. The U.S. spends less than one percent of the federal budget on economic aid to poor countries. That equals $29 per American. Some countries give about $70 per person. 


FAR-RANGING DOCTOR  

 

(One of a series on new members of our club)

 

Of all members of our club, Dr. Louis Koster is perhaps the least likely to tell you details of his work. He’s affable, but tends to be shy. As you get to know him you may gather that he’s busy in international negotiations, a field where people seldom describe what they’ve done or are doing. Since 1997 his Pier Avenue home has been the office of a non-profit organization called Strategic Humanitarian Developments. It has about forty volunteer workers in Serbia, Croatia, Romania and elsewhere. They are steered by Koster and six other paid people. What do they do? “We are committed to fostering world peace before conflict reaches a point of no return.” 

In addition, last year he founded an international consulting company called Strategic Business Developments, Inc. He says it is “designed to impact the profitability of an organization by transforming its culture and unleashing the human spirit”. How does it perform these formidable tasks? He smiles and murmurs that its methods are too intricate and subtle to define in any brief chat. If, despite his bent for abstractions, you get Dr. Koster to talk about his career, he may briefly mention a series of remarkable missions. 

                In 1988 he was in Pakistan putting together two huge health clinics and two camps for 200,000 Afghan refugees. In 1989 he toiled three months in the Sudan setting up a health care center for 4,000 displaced people. In 1990 he was in Angola for seven months, working for the Red Cross as medical coordinator of a 150-bed hospital. 

                In 1991 he was in Liberia for Doctors Without Borders, organizing health care of 100,000 people. He spent three months in Bosnia for the same organization, devising systems to distribute drugs and medical supplies among 150,000 people beset by civil war. In 1995 he was at Guantanamo Bay, helping manage medical care for 9,000 Cuban migrants. In 1996-98 he traveled around Romania developing a center for handicapped teen-agers, an AIDS-prevention organization, and a training course for 35,000 Serbian small-business owners. 

            Last year in Rotterdam he led a course, “Communication, Teamwork & Leadership” for a non-profit organization of students training for international leadership roles. This year SHD is at work in the South Pacific on delicate negotiations to help end nine years of guerrilla war by Bougainville against its government in Papua, New Guinea. SHD has pledged $15,000 to pay for the penniless Bougainvilleans’ expenses during the negotiations (travel, legal bills, and satellite phones needed because the islanders’ phone system was wiped out during hostilities). (For more information about this project, go to WWW.S.H.D.org.) 

                Dr. Koster doesn’t talk much about his personal life. He comes from a Netherlands family of doctors, including an uncle who led a resistance organization during World War II but was caught, and died in the Nazis’ extermination camp at Belsen. 

                He earned his medical degree in 1985 from the University of Utrecht, then grew active in geopolitical affairs and came to Southern California to enroll in a masters program in public health offered by Loma Linda University. He has lived in Santa Monica since 1992. He classifies himself as “fluent or advanced” in six languages, and “elementary” in three others. If only in English, we’re happy to welcome him to our club.

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