Scribe’s apology, I neglected to get the quote/history/Rotary minute from Mona, and wasn’t ready to write that fast that quickly, so we will start with:
Anniversaries and Birthdays: None
Announcements:
-Board Meeting Thursday Sept 1 7:15 at the Legion
-Josh Goldberg will be filling in for President Mona next week
-Moving Wall Sign Up Genius will be sent out again this week. We are providing food. Also, Tristam is responsible for parking and needs at least 3 people/day to help. We will see if Sadie can add this to the Sign Up Genius.
-October overflow shelter meal is moved later in the month, the 16th or 17th. Check under the Sign Up Genius that Sadie sent out.
-Disc Golf, we are currently working with the Brattleboro Rotary to beak down duties and a full schedule will be coming soon. We are still looking for a major tournament sponsor.
-Trivia is going forward and will happen on Mon Sept 13. Charity is the Moving Wall, trivia starts at 6:30
-Steven Dotson (spelling?) is interested in membership. Board meeting was called to order as a quorum was present at the meeting, a motion was made and seconded to approve him for membership, motion passed, board meeting adjourned. If anyone has any conflicts with offering Steve membership to the club, please contact Mona or a board member.
Brags:
Mona- hit her Chasing Sunrise goal of 500 miles this week. She had to work through severe shin pain when she started, so it was a challenging goal and she thanks everyone for cheering her on.
Nick – was back in Maine last week with the kids and family, got to do some zip lining and much fun was had
Kevin – reiterated that he has a 3rd grandchild on the way, and has found out it will be a girl, Hannah Leanne.
Cards: 2 of Spades is the winner for Bethany
Speaker:
Bill Holiday, retired teacher from BUHS spoke to us about the ending of the Vietnam War, and about the Wall Memorial. Scribe’s second apology: this was a tough talk to distill into notes, especially because I kept stopping and just listening to the story as it was being told, my apologies if this isn’t as thorough a write up as possible.
“We have a tendency to reduce wars to numbers”, and the number of names on the Wall has gone up, as there have been veterans who have succumbed to illnesses related to their time in Vietnam. These names need to be approved by Congress to be added.
Stories of Vietnam included the tale of a boy that helped out at a US compound, only to come in one day and detonate a bomb he was wearing. Afterward, at that camp, even children could be seen as a threat, showing us there was more to the story than just our soldiers being “baby killers”, as they were accused of in the media back home.
The original wall was designed by a Yale undergrad, who won the contest for the design of the memorial, and the Wall became the most visited memorial in the country, only recently eclipsed by the 9/11 memorial.
On April 30, 1975, the last American helicopter left the camp in Vietnam. Prior to that, on April 11, Donang on the central coast had fallen, meaning the withdrawal had to accelerate at a pace that wasn’t expected. There was panic and desperation. Very similar to recent events.
And the parallels didn’t stop there. In both Vietnam and Afghanistan:
-we had no concrete objective at which point we could end the war
-the collapse of the US supported army happened faster than expected
-things went “right back to where they were”
-the future is uncertain for those left behind, those that opposed the regime
This note takers take away: those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.