Farewell to our Exchange Students, and the Interesting History of Rigid Airships

We bid a fond bon voyage to our two Rotary Exchange Students, Kate Smith and Bekah Mortensen. 
We were treated to an interesting talk by John Geoghegan, author of  When Giants Ruled the Sky, the brief reign and tragic demise of the American rigid airship.

John LeCave led the Pledge of Allegiance.

Scott Bonin, gave the Inspirational Thought:  The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity.The optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty. – Winston Churchill   Scott added that our Club inspires contagious optimism.

Susan Cole led the song, “My Club” patterned after “My Girl” by the Temptations.

We had several guests today:
Kate Smith, on her way to Japan in August, and she brought her Grandma, Lauren Hull.

Bekah Mortensen and her Mom, Kelly and Dad, Greg were on hand to wish her bon voyage to Sweden this weekend.  

Geoff Harrison and Allison Johnson from Sonoma County Resource Recovery joined our meeting today.

Lauren Hull, publisher of the Windsor Connections Magazine also joined us. 

Welcome, all, and thank you for joining us!

Upcoming Events:
July 26, (TONIGHT)  Windsor Chamber Get Connected After Hours, tonight at Super Sonoman 7726 Bell Road
August 16:  DG Jennifer Strong visits, and our distinguished President, Brian Ling, celebrates his birthday.
August 30:  5th Tuesday #1.  President Brian is starting a new tradition.  He has divided the club into groups.  Each group plans an alternative to the usual breakfast meeting on the 5th Tuesday.  
October 1, Saturday, Tentative date for Windsor Rotary’s 35th Anniversary

Beth Smith had a parting gift and notes for each of our Rotary Exchange students, Kate and Bekah.  Kate thanked the Club once again for staying by her over the last three years as we all navigated through the pandemic and she finally gets to go abroad.  She is very grateful.  Bekah echoed Kate’s thanks, and added that the Club has been so supportive.  

Guest Presentation:
Our Guest Speaker was John Geoghegan, author of  When Giants Ruled the Sky; the brief reign and tragic demise of the American rigid airships.   John gave a fascinating talk with slides about the truly amazing development of rigid airships – we call their much smaller cousins “blimps.”  The USS Macon was the largest and most advanced airship – of the time, and was 140 times bigger than the Goodyear blimp.   While planes had a range of 350 miles, the Macon had a range of 10,000 miles.  They were intended to patrol the Pacific for Japanese ships and subs.  They flew above the clouds and lowered a “spy car” below the clouds on a pendulum type cable to get closer observation.    Moffett Field in Mountain View has the hangar that was originally built to house the Macon.

Why did it fail?  John cagily answers, “You will have to buy the book to find out.”  John focuses on unusual inventions that fail despite their great promise. 

Thanks to
  Set up:  Jason, Beth, JB, Larry
  Greeter: Mike
  Song: Susan
  Scribe: Monica
  Inspiration: Scott
  Speaker: JB
  Guests: Kate, Bekah, Geoff, Alissa, Lauren

Next week our substitute president will be Pegi Ball.