Meeting |
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Report |
Meeting |
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Report |
April 23, 2002 |
| Click here for photos of this Meeting | |
| President Jim called the meeting to order at
12:45 p.m. Steve Byrum introduced the guests and visiting Rotarians. John
Rogers reported that the health of the Club was good. He shared a (rue story about New
Orleans since it has been in the news so often recently. In New Orleans, you need to have
lived in the community a long time in order to be accepted. A few years ago, the King Tut
exhibit came to New Orleans and very few locals were visiting the exhibit. A woman at a
cocktail party said she wasn't surprised as Tut was not from New Orleans. Based on the
Club's response to that tale, John did not attempt to tell a second story. President Jim led us in the Pledge of Allegiance and to the delight of the crowd chose not to have a song. Gene Williams gave the invocation. President Jim mentioned that there will be a marathon golf fundraiser at Raintree Country Club on Saturday, May 4. Funds raised will support the International Rotary Golf Tournament to be held in Charlotte in 2004. Our president introduced the head table, which included Mark Schaffner, Worth Williamson, Gene Williams, Brent Trexler and Ed Ellis who introduced our speakers, Mike Bush and Charlie Williams. Mike is the executive director of the Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden. Mike has been employed there since 1993 and has been director since 1996. He has over thirty years' experience in botany, working in Bermuda, Florida, and Oklahoma before arriving in North Carolina. Mike began his remarks by thanking the many Charlotte Rotary members who are donors, visitors, and board members. Daniel Stowe in Belmont, with a $2 million budget and 30 employees, is home to the major garden in our region and is poised to become the center for education and entertainment in the region. Last year, 70,000 people visited the gardens. Some come because it's a place of beauty and serenity. Hundreds came after September 11 for refuge. Some come because it's a place for education. Hundreds of day campers come every summer to learn about flowers and plants. Over a thousand will come to the garden on July 4th to hear the Charlotte Symphony's Summer Pops concert. Mike encouraged Rotary members to use the free tickets on the tables to visit the garden, and if it exceeds your expectations, to consider being a member. Mike then introduced Andre Michaux, an eighteenth-century French explorer and plant collector who was one of the first to document the flora of eastern North America. (Actually Andre was Charlie Williams, the branch manager of the Carmel Branch library and chairman of the Andre Michaux International Symposium. Charlie has studied extensively the life and travels of the French explorer, and he dons Michaux-like clothing for talks like he gave today.) Michaux is a fascinating person. In one person he combined the frontier skills and stamina of Daniel Boone, the best botanical science of the French Enlightenment, and the manners and polish of a diplomat. Why should we care about Michaux today? One reason might be that we always honor achievement — we recognize the best at whatever they do, whether it is running the football, running a company, or running scientific experiments. Michaux was the best. Among his accomplishments, he is the only man to ever write a flora of North America entirely from his own collections. He traveled widely and collected and analyzed thoroughly. Michaux is remembered today as an inspiring pioneer in botany and horticulture, and especially for his legacy of plant names and descriptions. The first "Flora of North America" bears his name on the title page. Michaux both recognized many of our native North American plants as species new to science and was the first to import many of our favorite old-world species into the United States. The crape myrtle and camellia are familiar Michaux introductions. You can't walk or drive far in Charlotte without seeing a Michaux plant. The list of our native Carolina plants he was the first to discover or name fills a dozen pages and includes almost three hundred names. He traveled through the Carolina Piedmont again and again. He recorded his observations about plants, people, and places in a field journal. His handwriting is quite legible, and even though his journal notebooks are written in a kind of shorthand combining Old French, botanical Latin and phonetically spelled English names, we can use them to establish his routes of travel, itinerary, and the names of the people he met during his travels. His notes are brief because they were often made outdoors under the most difficult of conditions. In traveling familiar routes, he often visited with the same people more than once. He came through this area seven times in all and mentions some early residents whose hospitality or help he enjoyed. Most of you in Rotary know Edgar Love. Edgar actually has two ancestors mentioned by Michaux, Peter Smith and Christian Rinehardt. Rinehardt lived near Lincolnton. Smith lived near the present town of Stanley in Gaston County. Michaux actually mentions Rinehardt three times. Michaux had described extensive collecting of the species on the banks of a small creek between the towns of Lincolnton and Charlotte on April 3, 1796. However, no one knew where this site was. No one even knew for certain exactly where the road he followed was. After extensive research, Charlie relocated this site in Gaston County. Moreover, the Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden formed a consortium with Belmont Abbey College and the Gaston Day School to sponsor an Andre Michaux Celebration in May 2002 — only three weeks from now. The celebration includes a symposium at Belmont Abbey, an art exhibit at the Mint, a festival at the garden, and a kickoff speaker who is a sort of modern Michaux, Harvard-trained tropical ethnobotanist Mark Plotkin. Just as Michaux worked on the frontier of science and civilization when both were in the southeastern U.S. two hundred years ago, Plotkin works at today's frontier, the Amazon rain forest. We hope you will join us at the Michaux Celebration! * * * |
New Member
2002 Law, Corporate Practice Kennedy Covington Lobdell & Hickman100 N. Tryon St., Ste. 4200 (28202) 704-331-7413 FAX 704-331-7598 wkean@kennedycovington.com Warren Kean was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Warren graduated cum laude from Washington and Lee University with a Bachelor's degree in politics. Upon graduating from W&L, Warren became a CPA while working as a tax consultant with Arthur Andersen in New Orleans, Louisiana. Warren attended law school at Louisiana State University, where he graduated as a member of the "Louisiana Law Review" and The Order of the Coif. Warren went on to obtain a Master of Laws from both New York University (taxation), where he was a graduate editor of the "Tax Law Review," and Georgetown University (securities regulation), where he received the Thomas Bradbury Chetwood S.J. award for being the top graduate. Before moving to Charlotte, Warren was an associate with Weil, Gotshal & Manges in New York City. He moved to Charlotte in 1992 as an associate of the Charlotte law firm of Kennedy Covington Lobdell & Hickman, L.L.P. Warren became a partner in the business law department of Kennedy Covington in 1996. Warren is an active member of the Partnerships and Unincorporated Business Organizations Committee of the Business Law Section of the American Bar Association and its various subcommittees. He is a member of the Tax Council of the North Carolina Bar Association and has been active with the North Carolina Bar Association in modernizing North Carolina's business law statutes. He also is a member of the North Carolina Citizens for Business and Industry Taxation and Fiscal Policy's Committee and is the Finance Committee chair of United Cerebral Palsy of North Carolina, Inc. Warren stays active by sailing and playing tennis. He has one child, a daughter, Adrienne, age 13. Welcome to Charlotte Rotary, Warren. * * * |
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