The Rotary Club of Kirkland held a regular meeting Monday July 20, 2026, at Prosecco Restaurant and Pizzeria in Kirkland.
Rick Walter sold tickets for the drawing.
Through a mix-up, many folks brought food donations for St John’s Food Pantry. Going forward we will bring food on the first meeting of each month.
Attendees: David Aubry, Bob Auslander, Margie Auslander, Roger Clarke, Gary Cohn, Susan Cohn*, Theresa Demeter, Brian Granowitz, Isabelle Kalisa, Chris Kelly-Storbeck, Jim Meniketti, Rick Ostrander, Rémy Pairault, Joanne Primavera, Angela Pritchett, John Pruitt, Jocelyn Ellison, Daniel Sada Caraveo, John Storbeck, Manny Tetteh, Rick Walter, Wendy Yang.
Guest: Kathy Franzel, JoAnne Van Batenburg, John Crocker, Tandisse Rahimi, Kambiz Rahimi, Jackie Gladish, and Lisa Jackson.
Club President Jocelyn Reiter called the meeting to order at 6:15PM.
Sergeant at Arms Roger Clarke led us through the 4-Way Test.
Kirkland Rotary Foundation President John Pruitt gave us a brief talk on the Foundation – what it is and what it does. He also introduced Foundation Board Members Rick Ostrander (Treasurer), David Aubry (Secretary), Rick Walter, and Jim Meniketti. Mr. Pruitt urged Club Members to become familiar with the foundation, get involved if desired.
Daniel Sada-Caraveo introduced our Student of the Month Tandisse Rahimi attending with her father Kambiz Rahimi. Mr. Sada-Caraveo then posed a series of four questions to our student, which elicited such information as the fact that she founded a non-profit while at school, and she also has been working as a life guard at Peter Kirk Pool during the summer. She has learned much about responsibility and accountability in this role.
Joanne Primavera introduced our speaker, Dr. John Crocker, who received his MD from Case Western School of Medicine in Cleveland. He is a retired family physician with thirty-five years of practice in Seattle, Washington. He was born and raised in Portland, Oregon and attended Stanford University where he met Dr. Jane Goodall. He has written a book that describes his eight months of work as a student with Dr. Goodall studying wild chimpanzees at her study site in Tanzania, East Africa.
Dr. Crocker described how Dr. Goodall’s interest in nature developed over time into her life’s work studying chimpanzees in their native habitat. In a similar way, working with Dr. Goodall in Africa helped fuel Dr. Crocker’s medical career and his lifelong interest in chimpanzees. This resulted in both a medical career and his lifelong continuing interest in the differences and similarities between mankind and chimpanzees. He described what he learned about parenting children from watching chimpanzees. He maintained his connection with Dr. Goodall throughout her continuing work in Africa. One of the lessons he came away with is that we can all make a difference in the world AND we can choose the difference we want to facilitate. There were many good questions from Rotarians.
