Janesville Blackhawk Golden Kiwanis

Blackhawk Golden ‘K’ General Meeting
Minutes
April 15^th, 2026

President Elect Tom Neumann presided, and called the meeting to order with a ring of the bell at 9:30AM.
32 members were in attendance today.

Tom Neumann led with the singing of America, the National Anthem, and the Pledge of Allegiance.

Invocation: Bob Knudson, mentioning the sun’s rays, the energy to be here and the children.

Raffle: John Janes oversaw the ticket sales and drawing this week.
The weekly pot was $10 and the big (Joker) pot was $63.
Dave Thill drew a ticket from the bucket, ticket number 674.  Congratulations to the winner, Dave Thill.
The deck of cards has 49/53 cards remaining.  Dave Thill drew the 6♦.

Tom Neumann thanks greeters Dave Figi and April Wright, invocator Bob Knudson, rafflemaster John Janes, and server Bob Knudson.

Happy Box: Glenn Disrude announced he is happy because two members decided on scholarships yesterday.
Greg Turco announced he is happy because Rotary sent a ‘Thank You’ card, for donation to children’s programming.

Bob Wilcox announced that Amy Wilcox is a guest today.

Jokes: Joker Glenn Disrude had a good joke about accidentally stealing a $115 tank of gas, and being ticketed $75, which is “not financial advice.”

Member Health: John Janes had a status update on Ron Shuler, who is with his son Bill at a new house.

Committee Reports: John Janes announced the Tree Sales approaches! (take a flier)!
Steve Skelly announced work is being done to start another Key Club, for home school kids.

April Wright introduced the day’s speaker, Santo Carfora.  Santo was a teach for 34 years, and 33 were teaching social studies.  He and his wife Jean owned a consulting company for equality training, where he travelled the country giving seminars and sometimes day-long workshops.  Santo proceeded to present upon the many facets of inclusivity and bias in the modern world.

The presentation included a video a company created about equality in response to claims a company was not fair with its practices, which they made a commercial for the public.

Kiwanis member John Janes asked, “How do we network better with people of other cultural backgrounds?”  Santo responded, “Make friends!  It is difficult being e.g. the only person of an ethnicity in a room.  It takes a constant effort.”

A clip was shown demonstrating stereotyping, about singer/star Susan Boyle’s start as a singer.  “Know someone before judging them, and be aware of your unconscious bias.”

Slides were shown and discussion transpired about unconscious bias.  A study was completed in the 1940s and again in 2005 with little girls and which skin color doll they favored.  The white and black girls generally chose the white dolls over the black ones, and justified it.

Santo was asked, “Should you teach unconscious bias to students?” to which he replied, “I always taught mine.”

April Wright thanked Santo Carfora for speaking and presented him with a Kiwanis Parker pen and coffee mug.

Tom Neumann adjourned the meeting with a ring of the bell at 11AM.

Reminders: There is a Programs Committee meeting next week.

On this day:
1493 Christopher Columbus is received by the Spanish monarchs Isabella I and Ferdinand II in Barcelona upon his return from the New World. Columbus presents kidnapped Taínos indigenous people, plants and items collected from the Caribbean.
1755 Samuel Johnson’s “A Dictionary of the English Language” is published in London
1783 American Revolution: the Continental Congress ratified preliminary articles of peace, ending the seven-year-long war with Great Britain.
1817 The American Asylum, now known as the American School for the Deaf (ASD), is the first permanent US school for the deaf, founded by Rev. Thomas Gallaudet, Dr. Mason Cogswell, and teacher Laurent Clerc in West Hartford, Connecticut
1850 City of San Francisco incorporated
1862 American poet Emily Dickinson first corresponds with author and future literary mentor Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a relationship that lasts the rest of her life
1865 Abraham Lincoln dies nine hours after he is shot by John Wilkes Booth while attending the play “Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theatre in Washington
1870 Last day US silver coins allow to circulate in Canada
1874 First Impressionist art exhibition opens in Paris, features Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro and Berthe Morisot
1874 NY legislature passes compulsory education law
1877 World’s first home telephone is installed in Somerville, Massachusetts at the house of Charles Williams Jr.
1878 Harley Procter introduces Ivory Soap
1892 General Electric Company formed by merger of Thomas Edison’s General Electric Company with Thomson-Houston Electric Company, arranged by J. P. Morgan and incorporated in NY
1896 1st Modern Summer Olympic Games close at Panathenaic Stadium in Athens, Greece; USA wins gold medal count with 11 and Greece the total medal count with 46
1900 An early 50 mile race is won by an electric car in over 2 hrs
1900 Exposition Universelle (World’s Fair) in Paris opens (till 12th Nov)
1901 1st British motorized burial
1911 Walter Johnson pitches a record tying 4 strike outs in an inning
1912 RMS Titanic sinks at 2:20 AM off Newfoundland as the band plays on, with the loss of between 1,490 and 1,635 lives
1915 NY Giant Rube Marquard no-hits Bkln, 2-0
1923 1st sound on film public performance shown at Rialto Theater (NYC)
1923 Insulin becomes generally available for diabetics
1924 Rand McNally publishes its first road atlas.
1926 Robertson Aircraft, one of the companies that later developed into American Airlines, flew its first mail route, between Chicago and St. Louis, Missouri, with Charles Lindbergh as the pilot.
1927 Yankees slugger Babe Ruth hits #1 of MLB record season 60 HRs; tees off on A’s Howard Ehmke in 1st inning of New York’s 6-3 win over Philadelphia
1931 First backward walk across America begins
1941 1st helicopter flight of 1 hr duration, Stratford, Ct
1945 34th US President FDR buried in grounds of his Hyde Park home, New York state
1947 Jackie Robinson becomes the first African American to play in Major League Baseball for the Brooklyn Dodgers
1948 F. H. Thornton observes a flash of light in crater Plato on the Moon
1952 Franklin National Bank issues 1st bank credit card
1955 Ray Kroc opens his first McDonald’s Inc. fast food restaurant franchise in Des Plaines, Illinois
1957 Saturday mail delivery restored in the US after Congress gives the Post Office $41 million
1958 10th Emmy Awards: Gunsmoke, Robert Young & Jane Wyatt win
1958 1st baseball game in California, SF Giants beat LA Dodgers, 8-0
1960 American folk singer and musicologist Guy Carawan sings “We Shall Overcome” to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Raleigh, North Carolina, popularizing the song as a protest anthem
1964 Chesapeake Bay Bridge opens (world’s longest)
1965 NFL changes penalty flag from white to bright gold
1966 Decca Records releases “Aftermath,” the fourth studio album by the Rolling Stones, in UK (6th in US)
1967 Nancy Sinatra and Frank Sinatra’s duet single “Somethin’ Stupid” begins a four-week run at #1
1971 43rd Academy Awards: “Patton”, George C Scott & Glenda Jackson win
1971 The Beatles win their only Academy Award as “Let It Be” earns Oscar or Best Original Song
1972 Barbra Streisand, James Taylor, Carole King, and Quincy Jones perform benefit concert for George McGovern for President campaign at the Forum in Inglewood, California
1982 Apollo Computer announces the DN400, DN420, and landscape display
1983 Tokyo Disneyland opens
1985 Challenger moves to launch pad for 51-B missing
1987 Alfred Uhry’s stage drama “Driving Miss Daisy”, starring Morgan Freeman and Dana Ivey opens Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons Studio Theatre, later transferring to the John Houseman Theatre; runs for 1,195 performances
1988 Meteorite explode above Indonesia
1989 Then largest lottery in North America ($69M) drawn in Illinois
1990 Sketch comedy TV series “In Living Color” premieres on FOX TV
1991 Magic Johnson sets NBA record for career assists with 9,898
1992 Jay Leno’s final appearance as permanent guest host of The Tonight Show
1992 NY Islander coach Al Arbour sets a record for coaching the most NHL games at 1,438
1992 William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley inducted into National Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame
1994 Jazz singer Tony Bennett records a session for “MTV’s Unplugged” series at Sony Studios, NYC, featuring the Ralph Sharon trio, and guest appearances by Elvis Costello, and k.d.lang; album release wins 2 Grammy Awards
1997 America Online (AOL) begins service in Japan
1997 Major League Baseball honors Jackie Robinson by retiring #42 for all teams
2000 Giant Sequoia National Monument proclamation signed by President Bill Clinton in California, preserving one-third of all giant sequoia groves, the world’s largest tree
National Library Outreach Day (formerly National Bookmobile Day) celebrates library outreach and the dedicated library professionals who are meeting their patrons where they are. Whether it’s a bookmobile stop at the local elementary school, services provided to community homes, or library pop-ups at community gatherings, these services are essential to the community. Each year, National Library Outreach Day is celebrated on Wednesday of National Library Week.

Minutes by Ryan Lewis.
Credit: Dave Figi, and Ryan Lewis, photographs.

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