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The Dawn Princess
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Led by District Governor Duane Ruud, the 1999-2000 District 5030 Conference lured 367 attendees to the decks of the Dawn Princess, the first “floating” conference in District history.
Seven BBRC members attended: John DeWater, Wayne McCaulley, Bruce Walker, Dale Hemphill, Earl Falk, Dick Clarke, and Wally Mahoney. Also in attendance were spouses
Pat Walker, Hellen Hemphill, Feigie Falk, Donna Clarke, and Bernadette Mahoney.
In addition to Rotarians, the conference attracted such names as radio personality Jim French, Pulitzer prize winning cartoonist David Horsey,
Incoming and Outgoing GSE Teams, and a bunch of very active exchange students.
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Spouses also enjoyed the cruise, as witnessed by this photo of Bernadette
Mahoney and Donna Clarke.
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The Bellevue contingent flew to LAX, where they were delayed by a bomb scare in the airport parking lot. The Dawn Princess was tethered at the Port of Los
Angeles/San Pedro. The conferees boarded throughout the afternoon, Thursday, May 18. Attendees enjoyed lots and lots of excellent food, some very good cabaret/revue-type entertainment, and a fairly full
schedule of Rotary meetings Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Wayne McCaulley was in charge of cruise control, having set up the accommodations. Alex Hubbard,
former BBRC member, was in charge of entertainment.
Bill Alexander, from Tennessee, was the RI President’s Representative at the Conference. Guest speakers were Jim French on Friday and David Horsey
on Saturday. While all of this was going on, the Dawn Princess steamed up the coast at about 20 knots. Sunday morning, the ship had berthed at Victoria, which gave Rotarians a chance to visit the sights.
At Sunday midnight, the ship left Victoria for Vancouver, embarking Rotarians Monday morning for a bus trip back to SeaTac and their cars.
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Jim & Pat French
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Jim French, creator of the radio mystery series starring “Harry Nile and his sidekick, Murphy,” gave a delightful talk about the importance of “Service
Above Self,” illustrated by several anecdotes from his long career in radio broadcasting.
French started out in radio at age 14 during World War II, and got his first big break a couple of years later through the generosity of a senior
announcer at the radio station in Pasadena. The announcer let Jim fill in for him on a remote broadcast at Pasadena City College, and Jim never
looked back. Later, he met Pat Soule at PCC, where they were both students. Jim proposed, Pat accepted, and the couple celebrates their 50th wedding anniversary next month.
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David Horsey
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David Horsey, Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist at the Seattle P-I, gave his typically wry, whimsical, and sometimes acerbic talk about what we’ve been through in the past
thousand years and how history repeats itself again and again.
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Horsey receives gift from Duane Ruud
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David covered the Second Millennium, from Leif Erickson “to the couch potato” in the first ten minutes and then reviewed our contemporary history from 1986 – when he was a Rotary
Ambassadorial Scholar in the United Kingdom – to the present day. He raked everybody through the coals, especially both sides in the Cold War (Reagan, Gorbachev), Desert Storm (Bush, Clinton
), the various efforts of the CIA, and U.S. public opinion.
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Robin DuBrin
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Steve Heller & Joy Andrade
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Other presentations included a report on a cooperative program between Garfield High School in Seattle and the Emerald City Rotary Club. Robin DuBrin, Co-President of C4W
[Computers For the World] explained how the program is designed to bring Rotarians and High School students together to introduce computers to students in other parts of the world. So far, they have
completed hands-across-the-sea projects in Mexico, Russia, and Mozambique. Steve Heller and Joy Andrade, both from Garfield HS,
described their experiences bringing computers to Gatchina [near St. Petersburg, Russia] and to Colima, Mexico.
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Hemphill on display
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Dale Hemphill worked long and hard to put together the BBRC’s display at District Conference. All club displays were mounted on identical white boards due to
space limitations aboard the Dawn Princess.
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Warren Crain
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A program that was very visible at the Conference was the Group Study Exchange. The Brazilian Team was completing their stay in District 5030, and the American
GSE team had just returned from District 5500 in the northern area of Brazil. The man in charge of GSE for many years for District 5030 is Warren Crain, a member of the Seattle
Industrial Rotary Club.
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Bruce Walker promoting “training.”
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A new program called “The Train-Rotarians Across Russia in May and June 2001” is being promoted by BBRC member Bruce Walker. The train journey will depart from Vladivostok
and terminate in St. Petersburg on the Trans-Siberian Railroad. A new website is under construction (www.connect2serve.com - nothing there yet) which will be staffed by high school
students. The purpose of the program is to bring Russian Rotarians together, with the help of Rotarians in the West. Bruce has all the details.
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Butchart Gardens
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A number of Rotarians chose to visit some of the spectacular sights of Victoria when the ship docked early Sunday. I took this shot of Butchart Gardens, musing, “I wonder how many pictures of this view
were taken over the weekend?
Next year’s conference is set for Vancouver, B.C.
[Ed Note: Our thanks to our intrepid Offshore Reporter, Wally Mahoney, for his blow-by-blow account of what turned out to be a successful District Conference.]
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