Old Mission Rotary Club

09/05/2026

09/05/2026

Hi everyone,

A reminder that we will not have a club meeting this Tuesday, September 8, due to the Labor Day weekend.

We will resume our regular meetings on Tuesday, September 15, from 12–1:30 pm, when we will welcome District Governor Jeb Bakke.

Wylde Horses has also generously offered complimentary admission and reserved VIP seating for Rotary and Art Pratt Foundation members at their 3rd Annual Silent Auction and Barn Party on Saturday, September 26. The event will take place at their ranch and include live music, food, drinks, and a silent auction to support their programs and horses.

It would be great to have members attend and continue building our relationship with them. If you are interested, please reply to this email with your name so I can have you added to their guest list. I have attached the event flyer with more information.

Enjoy the long weekend, and I look forward to seeing everyone on September 15!

Cesar Cervantes
President, Old Mission Rotary
619-844-9233

09/05/2026

San Diego personal trainer and health coach Rico Caveglia is 84 years old and brings 44 years of experience helping people live healthier and more active lives.

Rico shared his practical lifestyle habits that can help us maintain strength, energy, mental sharpness, and independence as we age.

His interactive presentation to Old Mission rotary on September 1st offered simple strategies that members can begin applying immediately to improve their health and overall quality of life.

08/28/2026

Our very own Rick Wilson spotted on K**I News

Long time Old Mission Rotarian Rick Wilson was spotted on K**I TV News promoting the 24th Annual Women in Leadership Luncheon scheduled for October. Rick is the President and CEO of the San Diego East County Chamber of Commerce.

In addition to being fined for “shameless self promotion” Rick should also be fined for not wearing his Rotary pin!

08/27/2026

Workshops for Warriors- Old Mission Rotary site visit

Workshops for Warriors is a San Diego nonprofit school that prepares veterans and transitioning service members for careers in advanced manufacturing. On Tuesday, August 25th members of Old Mission Rotary toured the three buildings that make up the facility and learned about their accelerated training programs in welding and CNC machining. CNC machining is an automated manufacturing process where pre-programmed computer software directs factory tools to remove material from a solid block.

We enjoyed presentations by Development Coordinator Yolanda Lopez-Rettew and by Javier Aguirre who is a recent graduate and Welding Teaching Assistant

In 2013, our late and great Old Mission Rotary Rotarian Bob James was doing a commercial real estate appraisal on a building on Main Street by the Naval Station and discovered that it housed a unique technical training school for veterans called Workshops for Warriors (WFW). Bob was so impressed that he urged the founder and CEO, Hernán Luis y Prado, to apply for an Art Pratt Foundation grant. The request for $20,000 was approved in record time and Old Mission Rotary has been a proud supporter of the organization ever since.

Workshops for Warriors, was founded in 2008 and is a State-licensed, board governed, fully audited 501(c)(3) nonprofit school. Over the years WFW has graduated 1776 veterans having received 720,057 hours of hands on training and earned a total of 22,947 manufacturing credentials. 1459 graduates have been placed in full time jobs.

The most recent grant from the Art Pratt Foundation of $10,000 supported the build of a new welding training workstation. By December 2026, WFW will have 50 new welding workstations allowing future cohorts the tools they need to turn hands on practice into industry certification during their 16 week semesters.

The mission of Workshops for Warriors is to provide accredited STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) educational programs and opportunities to earn third party nationally recognized credentials to enable veterans, transitioning service members and other students to be successfully trained and placed in their chosen advanced manufacturing career field.

WFW is different from typical vocation schools in that students are certified with invaluable industry credentials as part of the program. These credentials are so much in demand that employers frequently hire WFW students even before they graduate. Many manufacturing corporations hire from job fairs at the school. Examples include BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Caterpillar, Tesla and even SPACEX.

Workshops for Warriors understands that most veterans are struggling after transitioning out of the military and need assistance if they are to participate in their demanding training programs. What is truly extraordinary is that WFW provides direct assistance to vets with scholarships, housing, food pantry, clothing closet, financial literacy instruction, resume building, mental health counseling and mentorship.

Workshops for Warriors can proudly boast that they are rebuilding American manufacturing one warrior at a time!

Photo: (L-R) Brian Dempsey, Stan Vogelsang, Bob Chalfa, Steven Nuñez, WFW Founder and CEO Hernán Luis y Prado who is also a member of Rotary Club 33, Old Mission Rotary President Cesar Cervantes, Aryanna Edwards, Don Krupp who coordinated our excellent lunch, Gary John Collins, Art Pratt Foundation President Eric Benink and Matt Risi.

08/25/2026

Allison Tartari, LM, CPM is a California Licensed Midwife, maternal health advocate, educator and founder of Thrive Maternal Health Fund. With more than a decade of experience supporting women and families and attending over 250 births, Allison has dedicated her career to improving the way women are cared for throughout pregnancy, birth, postpartum, and pregnancy loss.

Her path to midwifery began with her own experiences as a mother of four. After the birth of her youngest child with the support of midwives and a doula, Allison returned to school at 39 to pursue midwifery—a decision that ultimately reshaped her life and career.

Today, Allison’s work focuses on helping close the gaps that too often exist in traditional maternity care. Through her private midwifery practice, she provides individualized co-care for families planning hospital births, postpartum midwifery and home visits, breastfeeding and newborn support, education, and mentorship.

As founder and Executive Director of Thrive Maternal Health Fund, Allison works to make compassionate maternal healthcare accessible to families who may otherwise go without it. Thrive supports programs including postpartum midwifery home visits, maternal mental health care, pregnancy loss support, breastfeeding education, and community-based maternal health resources.

Allison is a strong advocate for collaboration between midwives, physicians, hospitals, mental health professionals, birth workers, and community organizations. Her goal is not to replace existing healthcare systems, but to help fill the spaces where women too often fall through the cracks—and to build a model of maternal care where support reaches families earlier, closer to home, and before a crisis occurs.

Her guiding belief is simple: When mothers are cared for, families thrive.

08/25/2026

Art Pratt Foundation of Old Mission Rotary Grant to the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library

The Athenaeum Music & Arts Library is a non-profit membership library in La Jolla. In 1884, a group of La Jolla women established the La Jolla Reading Room and by 1898, a reading room was constructed on the corner of Girard Avenue and Wall Street.

The library, devoted exclusively to music and art, is one of only 16 membership libraries remaining in the United States. It hosts over 100,000 visitors a year and presents year-round concerts, lectures, and public programs, in addition to fine art classes in various media. It houses a unique collection of art and music books, CDs, DVDs, and special collections, and is recognized especially for its collection of artists’ books.

The library is housed in three historic buildings, which were joined and remodeled in 2006 following an ambitious capital campaign. In 2016, the Athenaeum Art Center opened in the Logan Heights neighborhood, featuring a print studio and an event space. The library is open to the public five days a week: Tuesday through Saturday, from 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

At our meeting on August 18th, the Art Pratt Foundation of Old Mission Rotary presented a grant of $8,462 to the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library. The funds will be used to repair their HVAC system at the La Jolla location. The Athenaeum's Executive Director Christie Mitchell accepted the grant.

08/17/2026

Our speaker on Tuesday, August 11th was former Old Mission Rotarian and past president of the club Jerry Hosenkamp. Jerry spent a significant part of his life in the Middle East and presented firsthand knowledge of the region’s countries, cultures, and political affairs. Over the years, Jerry has given several insightful presentations that have helped better understand this complex and important part of the world.

Jerry grew up in Michigan and attended the University of Michigan and is a very proud alumni: GO BLUE! He then earned a law degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.

His first job was in San Diego as a Corporate Lawyer for the Wickes Corporation. Other jobs included Information Magnetics in Santa Barbara and Carrows Restauraunts and Raynewater Water conditioning.

Jerry’s first connection to the middle east was with a joint venture between the Parsons Corporation and the Daniel International Corporation to build the massive King Abdulaziz International Airport project in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia during the late 1970s and 1980s.

Over his career, Jerry worked for Saudi Arabian Airlines and for a group of bankers that specialized in the middle east.

He moved to Beirut to work for the Hariri Capital Group (HCG); A private international investment firm based in Beirut and part of the prominent Lebanese Herari family.

Jerry was stuck Athens waiting for travel documents and reading the Herald American newspaper at the bar of his hotel. He noticed two English women having lunch in the hotel restaurant and introduced himself. Jerry took the pair out to dinner and the three went their separate ways. Later Jerry was interested in Jean but only had the London number of her roommate Ann. Fortunately, Jean’s friend gave Jean's number to Jerry and within days Jerry was off to London and they were married two weeks later!

Today Jerry and Jean live in Santee close to their daughter, her husband and two grand children.


Jerry presented with a map of the Middle East projected on a large screen. The focus of his talk was the religious make up of the region that are ultimately the root cause of the present situation.

The Middle East is the birthplace of the three major Abrahamic faiths: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Today, Islam is the dominant religion across the region, practiced by over 90% of the population, while historic Christian, Jewish, and various smaller minority traditions maintain a deep-rooted presence.

Islam: The largest faith in the region. It is split into two primary branches—Sunni (the majority) and Shia (with significant populations in Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon).
Christianity: The oldest continuous Christian communities in the world live here, largely belonging to Orthodox and Eastern denominations, with notable populations in countries like Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria.
Judaism: The oldest of the Abrahamic faiths, primarily centered today in the modern state of Israel.
Druze: An esoteric, monotheistic faith blending elements of Abrahamic and other philosophies, found mostly in Syria, Lebanon, and Israel.
Yazidis: An ancient, Kurdish-speaking ethnoreligious group with a unique monotheistic tradition centered primarily in northern Iraq.
Zoroastrianism: An ancient Iranian pre-Islamic religion that still retains small historical communities in Iran.
Mandaeans: A small, distinct ethnoreligious community tracing its lineage and baptismal traditions back to John the Baptist.

Jerry noted that there are irreconcilable differences between the Sunni and Shia sects of Islam and that not all Arab countries share the same politics. For example, after the first Gulf War, the Saudi government expelled huge guest worker populations of Palestinians and Yemenis because their governments were aligned with Iraq.

The situation between Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank are more convoluted than ever especially as ultra-orthodox Jews continue to build settlements in the West Bank. Once again, Lebanon is caught in the middle between the battling Israelis and Hezbollah.

Jerry warned anybody about trying to do business or diplomacy with Iran. Since the Islamic revolution in 1979, it is impossible to know who is actually in charge there and Jerry related an amazing story of a corporate team completely flustered during a visit to Tehran to discuss major infrastructure deals.

Our members were captivated by Jerry's insights and all agree that the region is more complex and dangerous than ever.

Old Mission Rotary meets every Tuesday from noon to 1:30pm at the Copley-Price YMCA in City Heights.

Matt Risi, Public Relations

Old Mission Rotary Club

Cell +1 619 993 3913

[email protected]

http://oldmissionrotary.org

08/17/2026

On July 4th, Jerry Hosenkamp called Stan Vogelsang to recommend the movie “Pressure” about the British chief meteorological officer who boldly advised General Eisenhower that the D-Day Invasion could proceed on June 6th.

Stan was an Air Force meteorologist and recounted two instances where he took a chance on critical weather forecasts.

-In Pleiku Vietnam, Stan was responsible for forecasts for combat aviation operations. The local weather was particularly important for the small observation aircraft such as the Cessna O-1 Bird Dog which was a legendary single-engine, all-metal monoplane used extensively for military liaison, reconnaissance, and forward air control. The aircraft served a vital role guiding artillery and marking targets with white phosphorus rockets during Vietnam War.

-In Incirlik Turkey, Stan was supporting air operations for a refueling squadron from the Colorado Air National Guard. Local meteorologists suggested calling off a high profile morning operation due to storms but Stan remembered how thunder and lighting storms took place in the afternoon back in the Midwest and forecasted clear weather. The training exercise was a great success and Stan received a letter of commendation!

08/10/2026

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Fellow Old Mission Rotarians Susan Josephson and Steven Nunez volunteered to help paint a Dry Cleaners store front for The City Heights CDC for Beautify the Block, a community volunteer day dedicated to revitalizing the University Avenue corridor in the heart of City Heights.