The Bulletin

Home of
Immediate Past District Governor
Jim Squire
&
Past District Governors
Frank Bentley,
Ralph Thurmond,
and Barry Smith

Meetings

April is Maternal and Child Health Month

Our Rotary Family
BIRTHDAYS

WEDDING ANNIVERSARIES

Rotary Online

https://sandyspringsrotary.org
https://rotary6900.org/
https://rotary.org/

ROTARY CLUB OF
Sandy Springs

LEADERSHIP

PRESIDENT'S CORNER
Welcome to the Sandy Springs Rotary Club

Welcome Sandy Springs Rotarians, friends and guests.

So far, this Rotary year has been challenging coping with the COVID-19 pandemic. We thank all who have been able to attend meetings in person and on Zoom. Although our service projects have been limited by the virus we have been able to help school children needing distance learning and for those in our community needing food. We are also doing great with our medical recycling program benefiting seniors. I thank our club members and officers in working hard to hopefully have our club once again achieve “Club of the Year” status.

Visitors are welcome to experience the Rotary Club of Sandy Springs' hospitality and energy. Meetings are typically the 1st, 2nd & 4th Mondays. Lunch is served at noon and the 1 hour program begins at 12:15. Hilton Perimeter Suites, 6120 Peachtree Dunwoody Road, Sandy Springs, GA 30328.

Reserve a spot by going to our website at www.sandyspringsrotary.org. Join your fellow professionals, community and business leaders, and learn how Rotary can benefit your future. Experience Rotary Making Things Happen in Sandy Springs!

Upcoming Program
Lynn Gendusa Speaks of Life Lessons – empathy and kindness

Monday, April 12, Lynn Walker Gendusa, author and nationally published columnist, will be the guest speaker at the Rotary Club of Sandy Springs.

After spending forty-three years as an Interior Designer in the Atlanta area, Lynn retired in 2015.

She rekindled her love of writing and began to pen stories and essays. Within a month after putting her tape measure away, she became a columnist for her old hometown newspaper in LaGrange, Georgia. Today she writes weekly columns for several news outlets in Georgia.

She has been featured regularly in the USA Today Network throughout the country and in Guideposts, MSN.com, and Senior magazines distributed in Canada and the US.

She is now working on her second book after her first publication, "It's All WRITE with Me! Essays from my heart'', published in 2018.

She resides in Roswell with her husband, David, enjoying a Brady Bunch life with their combined five children and four grandchildren.

More information about Lynn can be found at her website: https://www.lynngendusa.com/

This meeting can be attended in-person at the Hilton Suites.
6120 Peachtree Dunwoody Road, NE Sandys Springs Georgia
The meeting begins at 12:15pm and ends at 1:15pm

This meeting can also be attended via Zoom:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83053297439
Meeting ID: 830 5329 7439https://www.lynngendusa.com/

Past Program
US Army Captain Sean M Minton, looking for international peace

Monday April 5th U.S. Army Capt. Sean M. Minton addressed the Rotary Club of Sandy Springs. Sean is a Rotary Scholar, is currently stationed at Fort Steward near Savannah, but has recently spent much of his time abroad. Sean presented a brief overview of the whirlwind events of his last year of studies.

Sean’s area of study is International Peace and Conflict which is part of the War Studies Department of Kings College in London.

Sean has spent a major portion of his studies concentrating on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. He sees NATO (and the thirty countries it currently includes) as a pivotal component of international peace. He says, “If NATO breaks down, it will be a sign that international order is breaking down.”

Wanting to know what makes NATO tick, he resolved to look deeper into the sociological institutionalism of the alliance. He chose three major events to focus his attention.

The first was the 2007 Estonia cyber-attack – more information here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Amesbury_poisonings
The second was the 2018: Salisbury novichok poisonings – more information here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Amesbury_poisonings
And the third was the 2019: Turkey-Russia missile deal – more information here: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48962885

He built a case study around each event that would offer him a broad perspective and insight. He hoped to gain a fuller understanding of the NATO Alliance. Looking closely at the responses of NATO to these events helped him to understand how it functions. In short, Sean concluded that NATO is an institution made up of people which are shaped by our environment. When he speaks of the environment, he means the threats to peace and order. He asserts that NATO can exert a powerful influence in a push-pull relationship with the environment and, in a sense, be like the military arm of international order. Put simply, NATO's essential and enduring purpose is to safeguard the freedom and security of all its members by political and military means. Collective defense is at the heart of the Alliance and creates a spirit of solidarity and cohesion among its members.

In the photo from left to right: John Neill - 2020-2021 President of the Rotary Club of Sandy Springs, U.S. Army Capt Sean Minton, Sean's wife Caitlyn Minton, Jim Squire - Immediate past district 6900 Governor.

The Rotary Club of Sandy Springs would like to thank Capt. Sean Minton for his service to our nation as well as his drive to find a better peace between nations and people.

A little more biographical information about Capt. Sean Minton can be found here: https://sandyspringsrotary.org/newsletter/show/1405
Still more biographical information can be found here: https://www.meriwetherrotary.org/story/4641

More information about Rotary Scholarships can be found here: https://www.rotary.org/en/our-programs/scholarships

A Look Ahead
A quick glimpse of our Rotary meeting dates