April 15, 2009

Lake Murray-Irmo Rotary Meeting Minutes for Wednesday, April 15, 2009 President Eddie Robinson brought the meeting to order. Our invocation was given byJohn Adair. Visitors were Fred Splittgerber and Cheryl Cotton from the St. AndrewsClub. Larry Stohs introduced his guest, Meredith Allen, President of the IrmoChamber. Rod Funderburk introduced our speakers, Emily Stanek and Courtney Gibson. Rod introduced his guests, his wife, Rowena and grandson, Joshua. John Hanson announced two local events, the Richland County Electronics Recycling tobe held at Columbiana Mall on Saturday, April 18, from 9:00 to 1:00 and a free shredevent at Irmo Town Hall on Saturday. President Robinson gave a reminder about the CART fund buckets for Alzheimers research. Blount Shepard reminded us about the highway cleanup this coming Saturday. We areto meet at his office in Ballentine at 8:00 for breakfast and fellowship before thecleanup. President Robinson asked us to remember Jim Wellman as he is undergoing knee surgerytoday. Ginny Barr reminded us of leadership training in Charleston tomorrow. John Adair asked that we submit to him the name of a non-Rotarian for adistinguished service award. This person is to be a full time employee in theircareer for at least seven years. Emilie Keene and her committee are finalizing plans for the last fund raiser of theyear and is asking for suggestions for a topic or speaker. Lyman Whitehead provided health and happiness. President Robinson conducted a ceremony to induct Jerry Isbell into membership ofour club, with Larry Stohs and Ginny Barr participating in the ceremony. We arepleased to have Jerry and look forward to his association and contribution to ourclub. Happy dollars were given from John Adair, who proclaimed his piano tuning hasreached 36,000; Joel Collins gave a happy dollar for his grandson, Deane, in honorof his 10th birthday; Commander Jay Seward's happy dollar was for 3 new ROTC cadets;Kelly Payne's was for her supportive Interact kids and their participation inAdopt-a-Highway; Beetle Bailey's was for his attendance of the Heritage GolfTournament and Larry Stohs for Eddie Robinson's Distinguished Service Award atClemson. Beetle Bailey announced an annual barbecue for next Thursday for $7.00. Rod Funderburk introduced Emily Stanek, who was one of the winners of the RotaryScholarship from our club last year. Emily was born in Boston and moved to Memphis.She will be traveling to Monterey, Mexico, 2 ½ hours from Laredo, Texas, in August. She will be spending an academic year at the Tecnologico de Monterrey. She is aSociology major and minor in Spanish, having graduated from USC in May 2008. Shehas studied in Costa Rica, where she lived with a host family. She is currentlyworking as an immigration advocate. She will be working towards her Masters inpublic policy and public administration. Monterey, Mexico has a population of 4million and is a multi-cultural city and a business and industrial area. Emily toldus she is alert to safety issues while traveling in Mexico. She thanked us for oursponsorship of her. Courtney Gibson was also a scholarship candidate last year. Courtney is originallyfrom Saranac Lake, New York and moved to Irmo when she was 12 or 13. She went toour Dutch Fork schools and is a graduate of the USC Honors College, with a major inPolitical Science and a minor in Spanish. She will be leaving in early July, 2009and will be studying in Quito, Ecuador. She will spend 3 months at the Academia deEspanol-Quito, studying Spanish. Courtney currently works on Latino issues oncampus, as well as AIDS and domestic violence. She graduated from George WashingtonUniversity with a Masters in International Affairs, with a focus on human rights. She was attracted to the Rotary Scholarship because of the service aspect. Shethanked Rotary for this opportunity. President Robinson thanked Emily and Courtney and also thanked Rod Funderburk forhis work on the Rotary Scholarships. President Robinson gave a reminder about the Board meeting on Friday morning at 7:30at Panera Bread and adjourned the meeting. Patty Cavanaugh Reporter

April 1 2009

The meeting was called to order by President Eddie and the invocation was offered by Patty Cavanaugh. John Hanson then introduced our guests, which included Bentley Murrell and Marci Medway from the Five Points Club, Scott and Jay Downs, and then two guests invited by Joel Collins including last week's speaker Roi Canty from Ascension Hospice & The Lodge at Ascension, and Christian Stegmeier, an attorney who works with Joel in his law practice.

Blount Shepard was then called on to announce the next Adopt -a-Highway Clean-up Saturday and promised a breakfast that would be "to die for". I think I'm goin'!!!

President Eddie then announced "Happy Dollars time" and numerous members reported they were happy for various family members doing various achievements but the high-light was when President Eddie announced that he was contributing a happy "five dollars" because he had forgotten to call on Lynn Richards to give us Health and Happiness in the earlier time slot. So Eddie then called on Lynn and she said a card was available to sign, going to Bill Kopleman, and then gave us several tips on how to pull an April Fools prank on our fellow workers back at the office. I am sure we all immediately went back to the office and made our fellow workers feel really foolish.

President Eddie then turned the meeting over to Ginny Barr to introduce our speaker who was David A. Thomas, Special Agent in Charge of the Columbia Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in South Carolina. He said many people don"t even realize there is an FBI Group here in Columbia but they have 300 employees here, and they work closely with the Sheriff's Departments of both Richland and Lexington Counties, SCLED, and also local police departments. Mr. Thomas has over twenty years experience in the FBI, and although he has been Special Agent in Charge in several cities including St. Louis, he feels his tenure here in Columbia has been the best experience in his career.

Mr. Thomas has a wealth of experience in Ciber Crime Investigation and has assisted in the Ciber arena in fifty different countries. He spoke of Russia breaking into computors in the USA and referred to that practice as a "War Offense." He used a term of "Reverse Engineering" as a process and talked of intelligence devices, finding how they worked, and then how they would find a way to "jam" them.

Mr. Thomas talked of the FBI needing a gemologist to deal with jewel thieves so they sent him to different schools around the world to become a gemologist. They trained agents for covert entry and he said at one point he had to give mouth-to-mouth to a dog, because to enter a residence under suspicion, first they had to defuse a watch dog and when they were ready to leave the property they had to revive the dog so it would be like they had never been there. This practice gives new meaning to the term "Dog Breath".

Mr. Thomas talked of using the FBI intelligence initiative, on one hand, in Afghanistan, where maybe 10% of their 30,000 employees worldwide are used internationally to, on the other hand, making a contribution locally for gang related activities.

He also talked of keeping your computors at home safe by using anti-virus methods and keeping them updated. He said they have arrested some SPAM offenders that were making $500,000 - 750,000 per month from the hits to their somehow believable garbage offered because some people fall prey to these wonderful offers. His suggestion was to turn you computor off when not is use. Also when you use your credit card on line you might want to use "credit stops" to limit your exposure. I guess this makes some of us feel like we are walking around naked. How do you feel?

Meeting adjourned.

Larry Stohs