Remembering Rotary with Fred Ehrich..

bennington vermontList of Articles

March, 2006
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Although he was not a founding member, Fred joined Rotary shortly after it was founded and he has many happy memories. One of his fondest is of the Polio Plus Campaign. It was a brilliant idea and one f the greatest programs this country has put on. Polio has been stamped out in most of the world. The club went along Rotary International and really just took hold of the project.

"One of the really fun parts of Rotary was entertaining foreign Rotary presidents and their wives. We did it three times and the first couple we had was from Uganda and then we had a French couple and then we had a British couple. They just all were charming people and very interesting. The Uganda wife spoke very little English and had never been out of Uganda and they were told before them came from New York to Vermont that this was the hinterland and when she got out, her eyes were as big as saucers. She expected to have tigers and lions in the woods. After she spent a weekend with us, she didn't want to go on to Lake Placid"

Another tradition that was enjoyable was the annual attendance club contest with the Brattleboro Club. Whichever club lost had to entertain the other club. "e;They met at dinner and I remember particularly one meeting. We went over there on a bus and there were several bottles of liquor involved and by the time got there, thirty or forty of us, most of us were feeling no pain. At that particular dinner, it was the Rotary Governor night and he was very long-winded. I, at that time, used to volunteer for a birthday when no one had one. So every now and then, in this man's speech, I would jump up and call for Point of Order and interrupt his speech.

Each time I did it, Steve Jesseman would sing Happy Birthday and the club would join in the way we always do here. It cost me about ten dollars. An then the rest of that winter when I was skiing at Bromley there would almost always be someone from the Brattleboro Club, not anybody I knew, who would ski up to me and wish me Happy Birthday."e;

One time Sal (Sarcantangelo) told a very, very raunchy story about a funeral director. It was so bad I didn't even try to remember it. Dean Hanson in his quiet manner asked for equal time. So they gave him the microphone and he got up there and said, "About three weeks ago I had a call from a funeral director down in Florida who told me he had a problem and he thought I could help him. I told him if there was anything I could do, I would be glad to help."

"I got this body," the man said, "and the funeral is the day after tomorrow in Bennington. Ordinarily, I'd fly it up there, but it is too big and heavy." He said, "Perhaps you know him. He was a leading oil dealer in Bennington?" Dean said, "I know him very well. You don't have a problem. When I have a body like that, I give it a very high enema and ship what's left home in a shoebox." Sal was absolutely speechless at the time. He had no comeback."

Fred also has fond memories of the many projects that he worked on including Willow Park and the bus stop shelters. Be sure to ask him for more Rotary tales of the past.