PITTSFIELD ROTARY CLUB         District 6460         1-31-07

Visitors:  Joe Cook, Louisiana, Mo… (Joe’s been almost a regular…when are we going to just make him a member…?)

Guests:  Bobette Pfiffer, Investment’s Center of America assistant, with her boss, Ann Revis.

Keith Warner, new Minister at the Detroit Christian Church, with Mike Evans.

Art Vail had his 89^th birthday last week on the 24^th.

Special: David Fuhler presented our newest Paul Harris Fellow Award to Judge Mark Drummond.  Mark has been extremely helpful, and active, in assisting our Rotary Club in the Rotary Drug and Alcohol Program with the county’s schools.  He gives a great deal of time, and has made extra efforts to make sure the students get the message about the dangers of both drugs and alcohol.

Welcome to the Paul Harris Fellow group from Pittsfield Rotary Club, Mark.

Mark was also our program for today.  He noted that the Drug and Alcohol Program hits the students from so many different angles that the program here is one of the best designed that he has ever seen.   (That’s because we have so many excellent Rotarians who have designed it….and worked extremely hard to see that it is carried out properly, and that the students receive the information in so many different ways).

Judge Drummond also serves on a very special group of judges , who teach how to do jury trials to areas conducting ‘War’ trials. 

He was recently to Uzbekistan, and has done training in other countries for the International War Crimes Tribunal.  Their expertise is in teaching the adversarial system

Where judges of other countries may not have the same values .

In the International War Crimes trials in other countries, some do not have cross examination as a part of their normal procedure.

Mark has also worked in Rwanda, where over 800,000 were slaughtered with machetes…. There, he road down the ‘road of death’, where a combination of poor conditions/bribery/many accidents occurred.

Mark says that there are 3 major reasons the bulk of the children in America are extremely lucky:

  They were born in the USA

  To parents who have loved them…

  Enough to take them to church…..

(Isn’t it wonderful to have a distinguished judge with this kind of insight…and values).

Mark also told us that in Tangiers, ‘Hearsay’ evidence is allowed…(ie: my cousin told my aunt, who told my brother that ‘…..’)

His trips are funded by the United Nations.  He was invited to take on this important duty by the American Bar Association.   They also give free legal training for attorneys in non-criminal cases in the countries visited.  Thanks Mark.  Very informative program!!!

Make-up….Roberta  in London, via ‘online’…(how about informing the rest of us how to do this….(maybe we’d have better total attendance, plus learn a lot from other clubs…)