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Paul McMenemy introduced our speaker, Dr Jim Mitchell. The title of his talk was ' How Galt/Preston Rotary Saved My Life in 1952. Jim came from a family where finances were tight and he had six siblings. In 1952 at the age of 9 he was seriously injured at the Galt Santa Claus Parade. Several fractures, infected wounds and a long series of orthopedic procedures at Sick Kids in Toronto. There was no Ohip then so the Galt/Preston Rotary Club helped pay for the surgeries. After a year or so he was stable but could no longer do sports. So in his own words, he became a nerd. He excelled in academia. Ten years after his accident he was at Waterloo University. He found his calling in computer related endeavours. He first worked with the dreaded IBM 7040 and those cursed Fortran programming cards. ( I remember those). He made it run 50 times faster. He got his PhD at Carnegie Mellon in Philadelphia. He felt he had been spared for a reason. I was just 'blown away' by his accomplishments. In story book fashion he was in the right place at the right time, developing innovative programmes and being there to develop the first basic PC . His fellow 'nerds' went on for develop Adobe, Apple , Microsoft ete. In 1983 he was at Cambridge University in England and had a hand in developing the first microprocessor chip. And much more. He feels strongly that Rotary helped him accomplish all this in his life. Many thanks to Dr Jim Mitchell. We are Rotarians and this is what we do. |
