By Past District Governor Richard Green
I was invited to be a guest at the District 1145 Conference in Bournemouth to meet up with a great friend of the Rotary Club of Wolverhampton – Jenny Seagrove, who was a speaker there.
We heard the national winning vocalist of this year’s Rotary Young Musician Competition, Eyra Norman who had been sponsored by the Rotary Club of Godalming.
Past President, the Rotary Club of Godalming Vivien Gillman with Eyra Norman and Jenny Seagrove – proudly showing their support for the End Polio campaign with the Polio bear mascot.
16 year old Eyra is a delightful young lady with a stunning voice, and she will certainly achieve her aim of becoming as professional opera singer. She will probably be offered a choice of world famous music schools to pursue her studies including the Mozarteum in Salzberg or the Juilliard in New York.
I suggested that Eyra might sing at Jenny’s annual carol concert which takes place on Sunday, December 10th at the church of St Peter and St.Paul in Godalming and, after hearing her performance, Jenny was very keen for this to happen.
The concert is one of many fund raisers organised in support of the Mane Chance Horse Sanctuary near Guildford. Club members may remember Jenny’s talk when she visited us and it was the subject of her presentation at the conference. The sanctuary is going from strength to strength and there are visits by children from deprived backgrounds and the local hospice, because these children gain tremendous benefit from interacting with the horses.
During her talk, Jenny told the audience of 600 that her father and grandfather had both been Rotarians, but she had drifted away from the Rotary family until her visit to us at Wolverhampton and our own District conference, after which she has become a great supporter of Rotary causes – including the End Polio campaign. She is also now a patron of the Rotary Jaipur Limb committee.
She is busy rehearsing for a new West End play ‘The Exorcist,’ which is due to open at the end of October, but she has fond memories of her visit to us and asked to be remembered to all her friends at the Rotary club of Wolverhampton.