Helping out at the April 28 Rotary Club of Edina meeting were greeters Matt Boockmeier, Katie Smith and her son, Finnegan, Les Wanninger and Bjorn Freudenthal. Mark Jessen had front desk duty for the meeting, and Barbara Born and Marty Kupper checked in guests. 

The meeting was called to order by Club President Jennifer Bennerotte at 12:30 p.m. Bill McReavy led us in the invocation, Pledge of Allegiance and Four-Way Test.
 
Jennifer then welcomed all our guests. Today was Prospective Member Day, so there were several guests who joined us.

Val Burke introduced two Edina High School students: Lars Redpath, a senior at EHS who will be attending St. Olaf next year; and Erica Rempert, a senior at EHS who also will be attending St. Olaf next year.
 
Rotarian Mike Sitek gave his classification talk. Mike is the oldest of six and grew up in Edina before embarking on a career that took him all over the country. He loves hockey and family and shared a picture of his large extended family and informed us that his dad has 22 great grandkids! He changed careers about nine years ago and now is a successful small business owner. Mike is very involved with both the Edina Chamber and Edina Rotary. 

District Governor Tim Murphy introduced Molly Greene from Water Missions—a Christian engineering company that builds safe-water solutions and has provided over 3,000,000 people with safe water in developing countries.

Greg Hanks introduced our guest speaker, Rob Zeaske, CEO of Second Harvest Heartland. His presentation was called "Feeding Our Hungry Neighbors." 
 
Zeaske has been CEO at Second Harvest since 2008. He has overall responsibility for leadership, planning and management of Second Harvest Heartland. Under his direction, the food bank has not only grown in size and scale, but also has earned a reputation as an innovator and national thought leader in hunger relief. His goal is turning hunger into hope. He shared with us that 1 in 10 Minnesotans are struggling with hunger and that 1 in 6 children are hungry. Rob told us we don’t have a supply problem—there is plenty of food available—he says we have a distribution problem. He has been working with a variety of food providers including grocery stores and even local farmers. It is important to address the lack of fresh food for many of these folks, but getting fresh food ready for distribution requires a different kind of logistics.  

Rob applauded volunteers—sharing that over 140,000 hours are logged by them at the food shelf. Finally, Second Harvest is experimenting with bringing food or food options to where people are at. So they are working with hospitals and schools on information sharing. 
 
Rob’s passion for his work was clearly witnessed by everyone present. Kip Peterson thanked Rob and Jennifer Bennerotte rang the bell to dismiss the group.

Rotarians Harold Hanson and Mike Kallas recently went on an Honor Flight to Washington, D.C., along with many other veterans from the Twin Cities area. Kallas accompanied his father, Mike Kallas, Sr., a veteran of World War II. 

 

Honor Flight Network's mission is to transport America’s Veterans to Washington, D.C., to visit those memorials dedicated to honor the service and sacrifices of themselves and their friends. Honor Flight Network is a non-profit organization created solely to honor America’s veterans for all their sacrifices. According to the Honor Flight website, they transport our heroes to Washington, D.C., to visit and reflect at their memorials. Top priority is given to the senior veterans—World War II survivors, along with those other veterans who may be terminally ill.

 

Visit www.honorflight.org for more information. Thanks for sharing your photos, Mike!

The Rotary Club of Edina’s Board of Directors at its meeting April 21 approved the applicants below for membership: