eBulletin of the Rotary Club of Superstition Mountain (Oct 07, 2015)

Executives & Directors

President

Matt Ruppert

Immediate Past President

Bryant Powell

Secretary

Jacquie Smith

Treasurer

Dan Govinsky

Director - Sergeant at Arms

Aaron McDermid

Director

Len LaFlesch

Director

Tracey K. Yamamoto

Director

Brian Kabat

Chair - Club District Foundation Grants

Len LaFlesch

Chair - Club Membership

Len LaFlesch

Co-Chair - Club Rotary Foundation

Bob Crow

Co-Chair - Club Rotary Foundation

Dan Govinsky

Co-Chair - Interact Club of Apache Junction High School

Tracey K. Yamamoto

Co-Chair - Interact Club of Apache Junction High School

Heather Itz

Bulletin Editor

Robert Homann

Webmaster

Dan Govinsky

Club Information

Welcome to our Club!

Service Above Self

We meet Wednesdays at 12:10 PM

Gold Canyon Golf Resort

6100 S. Kings Ranch Road
Gold Canyon, AZ 85118
United States

District Site

Venue Map

Stories

SPEAKER

Posted by Dana Hawman on Oct 07, 2015

President Matt Ruppert introduced our speaker, our own Bob Benjamin, who shared with us the story of how he became involved in Rotary.

Bob Benjamin with a sample of the rock that sunk the ship.

In 1985, Bob’s daughters were involved in a group called Indian Princess (part of the Indian Guides program). On one particular outing, while the girls played on the beach, their dads sat around the campfire swapping stories. Knowing that the company Bob was with had gone through a dramatic turnaround, this group of attorneys, accountants, and engineers asked him, “What happened?”

Bob, at the time, was working for Stan McDonald, the founder of Princess Cruises. He and Stan had worked together for about two years, starting up another cruise line, Sundance Cruises. On June 15, 1984, the first voyage sailed, and all went well. On June 29, the one and only ship in this start-up operation left from Vancouver headed for Alaska on its second voyage – and ran into a rock off Maude Island.

The ship’s experienced captain, Christer Bierqvist, evaluated how quickly the ship was sinking and took the ship five miles south to a lumber company dock, where he was able to get all 499 passengers and 288 crew members safely off the ship, just minutes before she sank, taking the dock with her. “The passengers were all in nightclothes, because this had happened at midnight. They had just jumped out of bed and ran for the lifeboat stations as the ship was beginning to sink.”

By 1am, Sundance executives were in the corporate office in Seattle, “Figuring out what to do.”

The Canadian military took the passengers from the lumberyard to COMAX Air Base. Pete Skinner, the “sales guy” for Sundance who had previously worked for Alaska Airlines started calling his contacts and by 5am, Alaska Airlines flights were shuttling passengers to the Seattle-Tacoma airport. Other company employees contacted Grayline, which provided busses to meet the planes and take the passengers to the Red Lion Hotel near the airport, where a full wing was reserved to accommodate the passengers.

Meanwhile, Stan McDonald’s son Kirby woke up his neighbor, “a guy named Nordstrom,” and told him that they had 500 people who needed clothing and toiletries, because they had not been able to bring anything from the ship. “Nordstrom called and had a crew of salespeople go to the store by the airport, and by 6am, we had passengers going in and out of that store, picking up clothes so they would have clothing to wear on the flight back home.

“My controller, Hugh Gustafson, woke up our banker at 3am. The banker called the security people at the bank and got the top-notch code, and Hugh and our banker drove around Seattle and cleaned out every ATM machine in the Seattle area, and headed for the Red Lion. When the passengers arrived, we were able to give them each $150 so they could go and get the stuff they needed.”

Next, Stan realized that the company was going to need a PR guy. The company had already hired Gordon Thorne, but he wasn’t scheduled to start working for another week. At 3am, Gordon received a call to come in and start working immediately. From the moment he arrived, Gordon laid down the rules: “No one talks to the press except me; I will tell the truth with no omissions; and I will keep the press informed. That’s the secret of getting us through this successfully.”

The company came out of the episode with a lustrous reputation. “Our comments from the passengers about how we handled this were 5-star. The travel press wrote the most glowing articles about Sundance Cruises; about how we dealt with the disaster, treated everybody fairly, and managed to get through this.” But Sundance went one better: Stan insisted that the company pay all travel agents the commission they would have earned if their customers had taken the cruises that were booked for the rest of the season – which, of course, they could not do without the one and only ship owned by the cruise line.

But how did the company avoid financial ruin after losing the ship, accommodating passengers, and paying commissions for travel agents? That’s where Bob comes into the story – as a prequel. Bob had sailed on the first cruise on June 15, saw it through to a smooth conclusion, and then he and his wife headed back east for some R & R. When the accident happened, he was sleeping peacefully in Virginia Beach. “But I did have a major role to play.” As the Sundance corporate secretary and CFO, Bob had met with the company’s insurance reps on June 15, the day of the first cruise. They were a little apprehensive about insuring that particular type of vessel, but offered another policy that necessitated a total loss before the policy would pay. “I couldn’t get hold of Stan or any of the other guys, so I made the decision and spent $10,000 with one signature, securing the insurance.” As it turned out, that’s what saved the company. “When the guy from Lloyd’s came, he handed us a check for $7 million for the total loss. That paid all the travel agents, allowed us to keep all of the employees in place, and gave us the leverage to get into a new ship that was twice as big as the first. By the following June, we had climbed out of this absolute gloom.”

By the way, when the ship was raised, investigators found that the marine pilot charged with steering the ship safely through difficult passages, had multiple bottles of mouthwash filled with vodka in his room. When the event happened, the pilot gave the command for a starboard turn. The captain realized something was wrong and questioned the pilot’s order, but by then the ship had already run aground – and the pilot had passed out. He was fined $1,000, was given a 90-day suspension, and then was back to work as a marine pilot.

After hearing the story, one of the dads around the Indian Guide campfire insisted that Bob come tell the story at his Rotary Club. That led to several more invitations to talk to several more Rotary Clubs. And that led to Bob joining Rotary.

Sundance Cruises went on to become so successful that Royal Caribbean bought them out (for an undisclosed, but juicy amount) in order to absorb the competition.

THE BENEFITS OF "MYROTARY"

Posted by Jim Erickson on Oct 14, 2015

The Benefits of MyRotary

Did you know that as of October 1, 2015 only 13 of our club’s 43 members have

logged into MyRotary on the Rotary International website. That represents a

percentage of .3023. Now if you were a baseball player, a batting average of .302

would be close to making you a super star. However, as an indicator of how many of

our club members have used this very useful tool, the number tells kind of a sad story.

So what would seem to be the problem? I suspect the members that have not used

MyRotary either do not know how to use the site, or they don’t care to use the site. In

other words they see no benefit to MyRotary.

Located on the Rotary International website is a short 3 part video course entitled

Learn Rotary – The New Rotary.org. You can find this material at

http://learn.rotary.org/pages/course/CourseMaterial.aspx?courseid=106

The third video in this course is entitled “My Rotary Video Tour.” The video, which

runs about 11 minutes, does a very nice job of explaining MyRotary, how the site

works, the information that can be found on the site, and most importantly, how to log

into MyRotary if you have never done so. You can even go back and watch how to

our members to watch this video and then establish an account at MyRotary. Am I

dreaming? Perhaps – but even if we could raise our usage from 30% to 60% we as a

club would be money ahead. And who knows, we might even collectively become

more knowledgeable about Rotary.

Once you have established an account at MyRotary you’ll be able to create your own

personal profile. You’ll find a quick club snapshot and you will be able to access

Rotary Club Central and view your club’s goals. Look these goals over. You might

learn something you didn’t know about your club, as you will see information on

membership trends, gender trends, and age trends. You’ll see information about

goals, engagement, communication, and public relations. You will be able to view

your giving history, and finally, if you so choose, you’ll be able to make donations to

The Rotary Foundation.

BUT WAIT – THERE’S MORE! You will also find featured links that will provide useful

and interesting information. On the top menu bar you’ll see where you can exchange

ideas, take action, find learning and reference material, find management tools for club

administration, find information about TRF, find RI news and information, and access

various online tools. Do you know what TRF is? I hope so, but if not it is The Rotary

Foundation.

So what is stopping you? Click on the link above (or type it into your browser) and get

started on MyRotary. Let’s see if by the end of this month we can have registered

MyRotary users at 60%. If you need help in this I’ll be happy to provide same. And by

the way, are you/we taking the over or under on the 60% number?

OCTOBER BIRTHDAYS AND ANNIVERSARIES

Posted by Robert Homann on Oct 14, 2015

MEMBER BIRTHDAYS

Pete Polster Oct 3

Jay Jones Oct 7

Ben Fellows Oct 13

Murray Hiatt Oct 15

Matt Ruppert Oct 18

WEDDING ANNIVERSARIES

Matt and Carolyn Wright-Ruppert 12 years

Ron and Mary Knies 43 years

Dan Govinsky and Marian Bass 13 years

Jeff and Tamara Cutler 21 years

Frank and Gloria Hulme 25 years

DATE JOINED ROTARY ANNIVERSARIES

Heather Itz Oct 17 3 years

Tom Puklin Oct 30 13 years

UPCOMING PROGRAMS AND EVENTS

Posted by Matt Ruppert on Oct 14, 2015

October 21 - Rod Daniels - District 5510 Polio Plus chair

October 28 - Robin Stinnett - SRP

November 4 - Doris Helmich - President, Central AZ College

November 11 - Sue Black - AZ State Parks Director