Wayne Zurl provided a fascinating look into the mind of an author and the effort it takes to write a novel.

Speaker: Wayne Zurl
Program: Wayne retired after twenty years with the Suffolk County (NY) Police Dept. and currently lives in Walland.  He is now an acclaimed author known for his Sam Jenkins Smoky Mountain Mystery Series – the adventures of an ex-New York detective who finds a job as police chief in a small Tennessee city named Prospect.  He has written 27 novelettes and 6 full novels.  Learn more and order Wayne’s books at Wayne Zurl’s Books.

Attendance:  14 Members, 2 Visitors – Gary Ubben of the Lenoir City Rotary Club and Barbara Zurl, wife of our speaker.

Member Tidbits: ● David Foote will be gone all of February

• We welcomed visiting Rotarian Gary Ubben who gave the club
  an update on our multi-club South Sudan Water Well Project.
• John Everson gave a brief description of a new “Mentor
  Program” under the TN Promise program and currently in start-up at Sequoyah High School.

Rotary Announces $35M Polio Grant

Rotary announced $35 million in grants to support the global effort to end polio, bringing RI’s contribution to $140 million since January 2016.

Nearly half of the funds Rotary announced today ($16.15 million) will support the emergency response campaigns in Nigeria and the Lake Chad Basin (Chad, northern Cameroon, southern Niger and Central African Republic). Four cases of polio were detected in Nigeria in 2016, which had previously not seen a case since July 2014.

With these cases, funding is needed to support rapid response plans in Nigeria and surrounding countries to stop the outbreak.

 “On a team, it’s not the strength of the individual players, but it is the strength of the unit and how they all  function together.” – Bill Belichick