Welcome, Joan, Marianne Soal, the Regional Paul Harris Dinner, Therapy Dogs and the Iron Lung.

Last Week
Marianne Soal chatted about herself and how being a Rotary Exchange Student in Texas made her keen to join Rotary.  She spoke about her training in education and how her life had changed when she married a Baptist minister.  She lives in Rosettenville in a deprived area where there are a lot of refugees and migrants so, through the church, she is busy with feeding schemes, workshops....you name it!  Just helping them fight their way through the red tape is a mission!  She has thrown herself into Rotary with the same enthusiasm she has for her work in Rosettenville.
Many thanks, Marianne.  It's a pleasure having you in the club.

We also inducted Joan Sainsbury as a member of our club bringing our membership up to 41.  Joan has been associated with our club for many years through the annual Arts Festival.  She has, at last, decided to join and we are delighted.

In this picture I do, at least, look a normal size....I've been getting quite a complex about presentations as I look like a midget..a tiny President!

My relief was short-lived as we had a visitor from Switzerland, Martin Bachmann, so naturally we exchanged banners.

At least our President Elect is shorter than me.....I await next Rotary year with a sense of anticipation.

Last Saturday saw the Regional Paul Harris Dinner to commemorate the Centenary of the Rotary Foundation.  There were over 80 present and it turned out to be a most enjoyable evening.  The guest speaker, Siphiwe Moyo, turned out to be highly entertaining and great fun.  I do wonder when we have these 'professional speakers' whether if I went to hear him this week I would hear roughly the same talk and the same jokes but that's just me being cynical.


Our Club was well represented...and here they all are:

This Week
Angie Thornton, who is the President of TOP (Touch Our Pets) Dogs is our guest speaker.  She will be talking about Therapy Dogs and the many different ways her organisation uses dogs in hospitals, in peoples' homes and to educate children.  She will be bringing a therapy dog with her.....I had to get special permission from Wanderers.....so if anyone feels they have a need for therapy just let Angie know. http://www.therapytopdogs.co.za/

Anns' Book Sale 23rd March
Don't forget to collect books for this.  Les Short will receive them at Rotary Meetings.

Rotarian builds his own iron lung replica to teach a new generation about polio

Recalling the fear that gripped the UK, the U.S., and elsewhere during the height of the polio epidemic in the early 1950s, Frank, a past president of the Rotary Club of Upper Eden, thought of the iron lung, a device largely relegated to museums and history books. The lifesaving mechanical respirator was a potent, if depressing, symbol of the debilitating disease. An iron lung, Frank reasoned, would educate younger generations who grew up free of the fear created by polio, a virus that is spread easily, during the 20th century. 

He hoped to borrow a model to put on tour to serve as a reminder that the polio fight remains unfinished. “I spent the last three months of 2015 looking for an iron lung in hospitals, etc.,” says Frank, 65. “I had hoped to source an original unit, but they have all been scrapped and those that remain are in museums, and they would not part with them. Being fully committed to the project, I had no other option than to build an iron lung myself. 

“This proved quite a challenge,” even for a retired mechanical engineer and self-described “nut and bolt man,” particularly after he resolved that only a fully functioning machine would do. “I learned many years ago that the dafter the project, the easier it is to get good publicity for the cause,” he quips.

Roger Frank put his engineering backgrou

Using the outline dimensions of a unit in the Thackray Medical Museum in Leeds as a reference, Frank rolled and welded steel for a cylindrical main chamber, fabricated tracks for a mattress that slides into and out of the unit, and cut access doors and windows. “I cajoled various local companies into assisting with the project,” he says, particularly painting the unit and a trailer used to transport it; Upper Eden club members also assisted. “I suppose in some ways people are used to my harebrained ideas, and not one of them declined to support the project,” he adds. Frank, who bore most of the construction costs, concedes that most of the 650 hours he spent over four months on the heavy metal labor of love were devoted to the trailer, itself a showcase worthy of a Rolls-Royce Phantom. 

“To finish the job, he then created visual displays to fit into and onto the trailer, including a television program of iron lungs being used ‘for real,’” notes Ben Lyon, the club’s immediate past president. “The finished result is a stunning promotional and educational tool in aid of polio eradication.” Onsite, a computer-controlled sequence activates the lung, in thumps and whooshes, for five minutes before triggering a YouTube video about iron lungs. 

For many polio patients, the apparatus was crucial to surviving the disease’s early stages, when their muscles were too weak, or paralyzed, for independent breathing. The lifesaving mechanical respirators were a common sight, lined up in rows at hospitals. The stricken, mostly young children, were confined in the chambers, normally for at least two or three weeks, exposed only from the neck up, with mirrors above their heads providing their only glimpse into the world around them amid the machines’ cacophony.

As a static exhibit the lung is lifeless and really comes alive when the motor starts and the end bellow operates. I think it really helps give people an understanding of how it would be to be locked in it,” Frank says. “Also the drive unit, or mechanism, is quite noisy and adds to the atmosphere, just as the original units did.”

Frank, who notes that his replica has been booked for the Rotary International in Great Britain and Ireland conference in April, makes the display available to Rotary clubs that agree to arrange transportation and staff it to raise funds and awareness for End Polio Now. It has been deployed to agricultural shows and schools, with area club members staffing the unit. 

“Most people, especially young ones, are totally dumbfounded by the whole spectacle, and after watching the video are mesmerized and stand motionless for quite a few seconds,” says Frank, “I suppose in awe, or taking in how somebody could spend [nearly] their entire life in such a machine.”

On occasion, a “lucky” visitor might be invited inside the lung.

Sara Dumbell, a journalist with BBC Radio Cumbria who reported on the project, says: “I get sent on many exciting jobs, but getting to see a real life-size replica iron lung was a first for me. The iron lung itself was hugely impressive. I’m 28, and so the major UK outbreaks of polio were a little before my time, but it was deeply moving to learn about how so many children across the world were forced to live in these machines.

“I couldn’t leave without trying out the iron lung for myself, but having the metal lung separating your head and body at the neck I found to be the most uncomfortable feeling,” she adds. “I must admit I was quite relieved when I was allowed out.”

With a nod to the red End Polio Now donation buckets at the ready, Frank says, “I kid people that it is £1 to get into the unit and £50 for me to let you out.”