WNY POLICE HELP LINE-Rotary Speaker Deborah Hard

                                    CHARTERED JUNE 1, 1925

Persons interested in joining the Williamsville Rotary Club may contact Bob Race  at 716 639-7458,  bobrace123@gmail.comor Paul Banas at pbanas@banasmortgage.com

Our mailing address is:Williamsville Rotary Club, P.O.Box 45, Williamsville, New York 14221

Williamsville Rotary Club member Ed Stachura gave a great classification talk.  Ed is a Senior Project Manager for TVGA Consultants, which is a local civil engineering group that designs and plans major projects.  Ed by the way actually retired in August of 2007.  He was formerly with Parsons Engineering and URS Consultants.  He wanted to stay active in his engineering profession and especially wanted to be able to mentor younger engineers, so he joined TVGA.

Joan Bozer was presented a Paul Harris Fellow by member Roger Gross. Joan is the Co-Chair for Western New York Renewable Energy. She presented information on renewable energy sources in the western New York area such as hydro electric and solar. She mentioned that Buffalo has the highest number of solar days in the Northeast. She feels that it is good for our area and that it will create jobs.

Leilani Pelletier works with the Alzheimer's Association of WNY.  She talked to us about dimentia and alzheimers.  Dimentia is a state where someone has trouble thinking and reasoning.  Leilani gave us a very good demonstration in the form of a test to help us to understand how a person with dimentia feels, thinks and reasons.  Without the ability to properly communicate, it's extremely difficult for a person with dimentia to function, and there are many different forms of dimentia.  There are 55,000 people in WNY diagonosed with dimentia, and probably many many more who go undiagnosed.  These people are confused and get easily upset because they can't figure out how to properly communicate what they think, see and feel.

Our very own Roger Gross and his son went to Europe this year on a tour of WWI and WWII sites.  Roger brought us back many photos, and a very telling narative of the WWI sites they had visited while in France.  He told us some fascinating true accounts of what happened during that war, for example, he re-created accounts of 1537 guns firing continuously for eight straight days.  Imagine the horror of trying to maintain your sanity during such a barrage.  He also told us of French and British troops advancing beyond their bunkers, only to be driven right back.  For months on end those soldiers would gain prescious ground, and lose it back again.  The tunneling and digging was extensive.  Many times one side would tunnel underneath the bunkers of the enemy to plant mines to destroy them.

The numbers of casualties, and especially MIA that Roger quoted were astounding and mind boggling, such as 75,000 MIA which were due mainly to the amount of shelling taking place, and the remains could not be identified.

Dan Ludwig and Phil D'Angelo were our sponsored candidates to RYLA this year (which we all learned last week stands for Rotary Youth Leadership Awards).  They spent a week in June at the State University at Fredonia to gather with other like minded young people, and learn a little about life, business, giving back, and their roles in being leaders in their comminities.  Currently, Dan is a full time student at Canisius College, and Phil is actively working as a skilled trades welder for Dekker Company in Cheektowaga.

Our speaker this week was Tim Kwiatkowski, Marketing Manager for Five Star Bank.  He has 33 years in the banking industry and has held many different banking positions with several banks.  His specialty today is commercial and small business lending.  Five Star Bank has 51 branches in central and western New York.  You don't really hear too much about Five Star in the media because the majority of their advertising is via word of mouth through very happy clients.  Five Star's 621 employees have worked toward some pretty decent growth, and they are the 26th largest SBA lender in the country, which is pretty impressive for a small lender (assets of only $2billion).  Most people don't know that small business loans have different requirements than commercial loans in that a person has to have a minimum 656 credit score, good cash flow, and collateral.

Deborah Hard heads up an initiative called the Western New York Police Help Line.  This is a direct line for police officers, firemen, and emergency medical technicians to call when they need psychological help after a particularly "Bad Call."  A bad call can be anything traumatic to those who are there to help, such as the death of a child, or particularly bad injuries to which they have to administer.  This is the dream of Mike Walters, who understands how hard it can be for those who are called on to help, and then are expected to continue on with their jobs after experiencing something that could otherwise devestate the psyche of other cilvilian individuals.

According to Deborah, and Bernie who himself is a 28 year veteran of the NYS Police, officers have a tendency to hold it in after a bad experience.  Unlike firemen, or even EMT's who can go back to the station after a bad call and talk it out with their peers, police officers are expected to get right back out on the job without a chance to get it off their chests, so to speak.  As a result, many end up with failed marriages (about 78%), broken families, alcohol and drug problems, and some even turn to suicide because they have trouble coping with the trauma of their experiences on their own.

The WNY Police Help Line personnel train individuals to help counsel officers when they call in search of assistance.  Since the help line started in February of 2008, they have trained 35 individuals from 16 different police agencies to provide some psychological service for their brother and sister officers.

When we see it on TV, it seems almost glamorous, but the reality is that these men and women are often asked to be witness to, or involved in some unspeakable acts, and they need help to be able to continue to function in the world with some semblance of order, or normalcy.