‘SPARKS’ OFF THE ROTARY WHEEL An Award-Winning Newsletter
The Rotary Club of Altadena meets Thursdays at noon at the Altadena Town and Country Club
Rotary Club of Altadena - #772 Chartered: February 14, 1949, P.O. Box 414, Altadena, CA 91003 RI Pres: Holger Knaack, Dist. 5300 Gov: Greg Jones
THIS WEEK via ZOOM: Speaker Chair for March: Sylvia Vega
Happy Birthday, Mr President! Program details not available at this time. Log on Thursday to find out! MARCH 18, 2021
Officers President: David Smith Cell: 626-826-2193 President Elect: Frank Cunningham
Treasurer: Mike Noll Bus: 626-657-2287 Secretary: James Gorton Bus: 626-793-6215 VP: Mark Mariscal Cell: 323-816-6713
Directors Doug Colliflower Maria Perez-Arton Sylvia Vega Sarah O’Brien Dawn Smith
Chairs Membership: Maria Perez-Arton International: Sarah O’Brien Community Service: Doug Colliflower Vocational: Steve Kerekes ZOOM INFO: Youth Contests, Scholarships, Awards: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84589196187?pwd=cE9Pa3hnL2ZwMjFyTW5 Mike Zoeller LN2sreXdIdz09 Youth Activities: Tony Hill Foundation: Steve Kerekes Meeting ID: 845 8919 6187 Passcode: 768576 Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kbItadr6xg
LAST WEEK: JACKIE BACA-GEARY Speaker Chair: Sylvia Vega Program Write-Up: Steve Kerekes
https://www.ecsforseniors.org/montecedro/
Speaker Chair: Sylvia Vega This past Thursday our speaker was Jackie Baca-Geary. She works in the area of blood donations for Huntington Hospital and spoke to us about the various challenges of getting blood donations during COVID-19. Huntington Hospital continued to have blood drives until May of last year. Then people became afraid to come into contact with others to donate blood. Her last blood drive th was at John Marshall on May 11 last year. The mobile blood donation unit is still not going out yet.
Jackie noted that it was interesting that, at the beginning of the pandemic, not a lot of blood was needed because surgeries were cancelled in order to re-prioritize hospital resources for COVID-19 patients. Also, people were staying home and not driving to work. So there were less car accidents. Once the vaccine came out, she worked in the vaccine clinic for 4 to-6 weeks. Huntington Hospital has a trauma unit, and this means more blood is required Jackie Baca-Geary than a regular hospital. Huntington Hospital’s trauma unit serves the entire San Gabriel Valley – some 200 square miles. As a result, Huntington Hospital uses between 10,000 – 20,000 units of blood a year. Huntington Hospital makes every effort to raise blood through donations. However, to the extent that they cannot get donated blood, they buy it from the American Red Cross.
Many want to donate, but cannot for various reasons. There is an upper age limit: 75. People who have lived in certain countries during certain times are Huntington Hospital has temporarily prohibited from giving blood. For example, people who lived in the UK during moved its community Blood Donor the mad cow disease outbreak are prohibited from donating blood. It takes Center (due to COVID-19) to 800 S. about 120 days for a person who has given blood to replenish it. But you are Fairmount Ave, Ground Floor, Main sufficiently recovered after 56 days, you may donate blood again. She expects Lobby. The parking entrance is off of the hospital will start having blood drives again in May of this year at Altadena Bellefontaine Street and parking will Town & Country Club and another one this coming October. be validated. For more info or to schedule an appointment, please call (626) 397-5422. FROM UNDER THE SHADE President David’s Words of Wisdom and more! The Big Mouth: Something you … probably didn’t know about her! By President David Smith
I designate March, “Women’s Recognition Month”. I found the following posted on Facebook: To Martha Raye, also known as “Colonel Maggie”. It was well recognized that Martha Raye endured less comfort and more danger than any other Vietnam entertainer. Don't let the sun go down without reading this about Martha Raye. The most This is from the movie The Imitation Game: unforgivable oversight of TV is that her shows were not taped. When the character Joan Clarke is I was unaware of her credentials or where she is buried. asking Alan Turing why he’s going Somehow I just can't see Brittany Spears, Paris Hilton, out of his way to include her on the or Jessica Simpson doing what this woman (and the Enigma team, he responds with, other USO women, including Ann Margaret & Joey Heatherton) did for our troops in past wars. Most of the “Sometimes it’s the very people old time entertainers were made of a lot sterner stuff that no one imagines anything of, than today's crop of activists’ bland whiners. The who do the things that no one can following is from an Army Aviator who takes a trip imagine.” down memory lane: This day in history (March 11) "It was just before Thanksgiving '67 and we were ferrying dead and wounded from a large GRF west of Pleiku. We had run out of body bags by noon, so the 1918: The first case of Spanish flu occurs, Hook (CH-47 CHINOOK) was pretty rough in the back. All of a sudden, we the start of a devastating worldwide pandemic. It’s a misnomer that this flu heard a 'take-charge' woman's voice in the rear. There was the singer and originated in Spain. To maintain morale actress, Martha Raye, with a SF (Special Forces) beret and jungle fatigues, during WW1 the media inthe battling with subdued markings, helping the wounded into the Chinook, and carrying nations were not allowed to report on the the dead aboard. ‘Maggie' had been visiting her SF 'heroes' out 'west'. devastation of the pandemic. However, Spain was one of the neutral countries and the media wasn’t being censored and could We took off, short of fuel, and headed to the USAF report onit. So the only news about it was hospital pad at Pleiku. As we all started unloading coming out of Spain...Just like the French fry isn’t French! our sad pax's, a 'Smart Mouth' USAF Captain said to 1969: Levi jeans add bell bottoms. Martha, “Ms Ray, with all these dead and wounded to 1961: Barbie’s counterpart Ken is launched. process, there would not be time for your show!"To all 1971: Russian rabbit invasion. of our surprise, she pulled on her right collar and said, 1997: Paul McCartney is knighted. 2009: Do to a white flag shortage, France “Captain, see this eagle? I am a full 'Bird' in the US reintegrates with NATO. Army Reserve, and on this is a 'Caduceus' which means 1918: The Guacamole act is enacted I am a Nurse, with a surgical specialty, now, take me to protecting the Chichi flies in some banana eating bean-farting republic in Central your wounded!" He said, "Yes ma'am, follow me." America. Anyone know what movie starring Several times at the Army Field Hospital in Pleiku, she would 'cover' a Alan Arkin and Peter Faulk that came surgical shift, giving a nurse a well-deserved break. Martha is the only woman from? buried in the SF (Special Forces) cemetery at Ft Bragg. Scoundrels born this day in history: Rupert Murdoch!
Hand Salute! A great lady. For more information on her on her USO tours and commendations: https://scholar.lib.vt.edu/VA-news/VA-Pilot/issues/1994/vp941022/10220294.htm Check your emails for Club Invoices!
Bags of Goodies For Children By Nick Santangelo
This past Saturday, Angela and I visited Dawn Smith's house to help fill the Grocery Outlet plastic bags for our Club's upcoming "Reading To Children Under 5" program. It was exactly as I thought it would be. We arrived just after noon and helped Dawn carry out the boxes of books, school supplies and educational materials that would be stuffed into 65 bags and given out. Shortly after setting up the tables and organizing the supplies, Mark Mariscal showed up. He arrived with his Dr. Seuss look alike hat and then proceeded to give each of us a hat (see the photos). And of course, he explained the process of stuffing the bags. After packing about half of the bags, Doug Colliflower arrived to help, followed by Mike Noll. What a nice Rotary Community Service Project we had. After stuffing the 65 bags, they were placed in Doug's car to be delivered to Families Forward Learning Center. This the location where we will be reading to children ages 3 and 4 along with Rotary members from the Pasadena After-Hours Club. The funds for this project were part of the Rotary District 5300 District Designated Fund (DDF). And of course, these funds come from our contributions to the Rotary International Annual Fund Campaign.
More about… (submitted by President David)
In the early 1930s, Raye was a band vocalist with the Paul Ash and Boris Morros orchestras. She made her first film appearance in 1934 in a band short titled A Nite in the Nite Club. In 1936, she was signed for comic roles by Paramount Pictures, and made her first picture for Paramount. Her first feature film was Rhythm on the Range with crooner Bing Crosby. From 1936–39, she was a featured cast member in 39 episodes of Al Jolson's weekly CBS radio show, The Lifebuoy Program, also called Cafe Trocadero. In addition to comedy, Martha sang both solos and duets with Jolson. Over the next quarter century, she would appear with many of the leading comics of her day, including Joe E. Brown, Bob Hope, W. C. Fields, Abbott and Costello (in Keep 'Em Flying), Charlie Chaplin (in Monsieur Verdoux), and Jimmy Durante. She joined the USO in 1942, soon after the US entered World War II.She was known for the size of her mouth, which was large in proportion to her face, earning her the nickname The Big Mouth. She later referred to this in a series of television commercials for Polident denture cleaner in the 1980s: "So take it from The Big Mouth: new Polident Green gets tough stains clean!" Her large mouth would relegate her motion picture work to supporting comic parts, and was often made up so it appeared even larger. In the Disney cartoon Mother Goose Goes Hollywood, she is caricatured while dancing alongside Joe E. Brown, another actor known for a big mouth. In the Warner Bros. cartoon The Woods Are Full of
Cuckoos (1937), she was caricatured as a jazzy scat-singing donkey named 'Moutha Bray'. In 1968, she was awarded the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in the form of an Oscar. After her death the statuette was displayed for many years in a specially constructed lighted niche at the Friars Club in Beverly Hills. On November 2, 1993, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton for her service to her country. The citation reads: ‘A talented performer whose career spans the better part of a century, Martha Raye has delighted audiences and uplifted spirits around the globe. She brought her tremendous comedic and musical skills to her work in film, stage, and television, helping to shape American entertainment. The great courage, kindness, and patriotism she showed in her many tours during World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War earned her the nickname 'Colonel Maggie'. The American people honor Martha Raye, a woman who has tirelessly used her gifts to benefit the lives of her fellow Americans.
Television career
She was a television star very early in its history. She starred in the short-lived (28 episodes) The Martha Raye Show (1954–1956), opposite retired middleweight boxer Rocky Graziano, who played her boyfriend. (Raye was known to call Graziano "goombah", the Sicilian abbreviation of the Italian 'compáré' ('cumpari' in Southern Italian - friend, comrade)). The writer and producer was future The Phil Silvers Show creator Nat Hiken. Some of the guest stars on the show were Zsa Zsa Gabor, Cesar Romero, and Martha Raye (cont’d): Archive Broadway dancer Wayne Lamb. She also appeared on other TV shows in the 1950s, such as What's My The moving image collection of Martha Raye is Line? Following the demise of her TV variety show, the breakup of her fifth marriage, and a series of held at the Academy Film Archive. The collection other personal and health problems, she attempted suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills on August 14, consists of an audio tape and home movies. 1956. Well-wishers gave her a St. Christopher's medal, a St. Genesius medal, and a Star of David. After her recovery, she wore these amulets faithfully, although she was neither Catholic nor Jewish. At the Death conclusion of each episode of her TV shows, she would thank the nuns at the Sisters of St. Francis Hospital in Miami, Florida, where she had recovered. She always said "Goodnight, Sisters" as a sign of Raye's final years were plagued by ill health. She appreciation and gratitude. Later in her career, she made television commercials for Polident denture had a history of cardiovascular disease and cleanser, principally during the 1970s and 1980s. suffered from Alzheimer's disease, in addition to losing both legs in 1993 due to poor circulation. Later career While resting in the hospital-type bed in her home, she and her husband Mark Harris (who, because of In 1970, she portrayed Boss Witch, the "Queen of all Witchdom", in the feature film Pufnstuf for Sid and their controversial May/December relationship, Marty Krofft. This led to her being cast as villainess Benita Bizarre in The Bugaloos (1970), which the became a frequent guest on the popular Howard Kroffts produced the same year. She often appeared as a guest on other programs, particularly those Stern radio program) were forced to move into a which often featured older performers as guest stars, such as ABC's The Love Boat, and also on variety hotel after their house was destroyed in the 1994 programs, including the short-lived The Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Show. She appeared from the third Northridge earthquake. Raye died at age 78 of to the ninth seasons as Carrie Sharples on Alice, making two or three appearances a season. She made pneumonia on October 19, 1994. guest appearances or did cameo roles in such series as Murder, She Wrote on CBS and The Andy Williams Show and McMillan & Wife, both on NBC. She appeared again as Agatha for the six-episode run In appreciation of her work with the USO during of the retooled McMillan, taking over for Nancy Walker, who had left the series. Her last film appearance World War II and subsequent wars, she was both was as an incontinent airline passenger in the disaster film The Concorde ... Airport '79 (1979). an honorary colonel in the U.S. Marines and an honorary lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army granted special consideration to be buried in
Personal life Arlington National Cemetery. Upon her death, it Raye's personal life was complex and emotionally tumultuous. She was married seven times. was instead requested that she be buried with full military honors in the Fort Bragg Main Post Raye was a devout Methodist. She regularly attended church, read the Bible daily, and taught Sunday cemetery at Spring Lake, North Carolina. Raye has school. Because her religious views were often misconstrued, she said, "One paper says I'm Catholic two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame—one for and the other says I'm Jewish. I guess that's fitting because, as a Methodist, I'm meant to be motion pictures at 6251 Hollywood Boulevard and undetermined some of the time". Her engagement to orchestra leader Johnny Torrence was announced the other for television at 6547 Hollywood Blvd. in June 1936. Less than two months later she commented, "They tell me I've gone Hollywood already because I got engaged to Johnny Torrence one day and broke it off the next."
She was married to make-up artist Hamilton "Buddy" Westmore from May 30, 1937, until September 1937, filing for divorce on the basis of extreme cruelty; to composer-conductor David Rose from October 8, 1938 to May 19, 1941; to Neal Lang from May 25, 1941 to February 3, 1944; to Nick Condos from February 22, 1944 to June 17, 1953; to Edward T. Begley from April 21, 1954 to October 6, 1956; to Robert O'Shea from November 7, 1956 to December 1, 1960; and to Mark Harris from September 25, 1991 until her death in 1994. She had one child, a daughter, Melodye Condos (born July 26, 1944), with fourth husband Condos. Politically, Raye was conservative, affirming her political views by informing an interviewer in 1984, "I believe in the constitution, strength in national defense, limited government, individual freedom, and personal responsibility. They reinforce the resolve the United States is the greatest country in the world and we can all be eternally grateful to our founding fathers for the beautiful legacy they left us."
For film, TV and theatre credits please visit:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Martha_Raye
For the extended article and references please visit:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Raye