September 9, 2025 Meeting Recap
As always, it was great to see fellow Rotarians at our lunch meeting on September 9, 2025, especially Kathleen Peneguy, who has been busy with work, personal matters, launching her daughter Emma off to college, and preparing for a trip to Ireland to see the Steelers take on the Vikings at the end of this month! We also welcomed guest Chris Lyboldt, who was a previous guest speaker.
Steve Cory took the lead for our Happy Dollars today so we could raise some funds to share our appreciation with Captain Andy Wheeler for all his help with our CPR/AED project. Steve mentioned that we are on track to train our 1,000th citizen on September 20th at our class at Wellstar North Fulton Hospital. In addition to Kathleen's news about traveling to Ireland, Garrett Vaughn mentioned that he and his wife are celebrating their 57th wedding anniversary with a Nile River cruise!
Community Service Update
Service Project Chair Amie Blanton gave an update on our Greenway Mural Trail project. We received 36 submissions from local high school artists and selected 14 art concepts for Phase 3. The artists come from several high schools: Alpharetta High, Innovation Academy, Kings Ridge, and Northview. Please see the separate article in this edition of the newsletter for important, upcoming dates!
Score for Polio Plus
Foundation Chair Doug Higgins gave an update on the Score for Polio Plus campaign. As of September 9th, our members have pledged $1,652.00 for Polio Plus. President Erik Bykat was "leading" the points (or dollars!) with $128.00. Please see the article in this week's newsletter for the Week 3 (for college) results!
Member Mic
This week's "guest" speakers were two of our very own members: Garrett Vaughn and Dan Jenkins.
Garrett Vaughn
Garrett is originally from the suburbs of NYC and attended Harper College (which has now become SUNY Binghamton). He served as a Policy Analysis Economist and lived in the Washington DC area. He boiled down his career in this way "I wrote stuff the lobbyists could carry around with them." At one point in his career, he was named the MVP of his department. Unfortunately, that department was eliminated shortly thereafter! In 2010, Garrett retired and he and his wife moved to the Roswell area to be closer to their daughter and three grandchildren. Garrett originally joined Rotary for the social aspects, but quickly realized that he also appreciates our "service above self" attitude!
Dan Jenkins
Dan began his moment of Member Mic by explaining how important family is to him. Originally from northern New Jersey, he is one of 8 children himself (and is number 7 out of 8) and has a close relationship to his one brother and six sisters. Dan attended Ramapo College and studied Marketing and Finance. He started his professional career in the medical devices area as a temporary hire with Ciba Corn and his career took him up the ranks in Sales and Marketing at a few different companies including Bayer Diagnostics, Siemens, and Cepheid. Dan retired in May 2025 and has been to Europe three times since then! It sure seems like he likes retired life!
Dan has been married to Karen for 15 years. They each had two children when they married so they merged their families together in the way of The Brady Bunch. Together, they have three daughters and one son, one daughter-in-law, one son-in-law and another daughter about to become engaged (shhhh!! She doesn't know this, but I feel fairly confident that she will not stumble upon our newsletter on the internet!) Earlier this year, Dan and Karen became dog parents to white labrador, Aspen.
Dan's answers to Why Rotary?
Thanks to both Garrett and Dan for sharing a little about yourselves with the club - we all benefit from having you as part of Rotary Club of North Fulton!
