5:01 Meeting April 2: The Peace Pipe Letters

Please join us at the University Club on Tuesday, April 2nd as we hear from Tony Conn and Yogi Reppman about the Peace Pipe Letters.

 

The Great War, followed by the Great Depression created the perfect storm which led us into World War II.  Between the two wars, 1931 to be exact, Rotary International held its annual convention in Vienna Austria.  William Jewett Fulton, from RC Keokuk Iowa, attended that convention.  What Rotarian Fulton learned in Vienna, and what he witnessed touring Europe after the convention motivated him to reach out to Rotary clubs around the world.  Dialogue between those clubs soon became known as the Peace Pipe Letters.  An amazing study of those letters, Rotarians of that period, and the parallels to today's state of affairs.

 

Anthony (Tony) Conn, Member of RC St. Paul.  Works for Mapei Corp., a construction chemical company (Milan, Italy). He served 10 years in the United States Army as an officer in the Corps of Engineers, stationed in South Korea, Germany.  Anthony is a graduate of St. Ambrose University. He is President and co-founder of Peace Pipe Proposal, llc., a non-profit organization that promotes world peace and international understanding.  Along with wife Lori and daughter, lives in Woodbury.  

Dr. Joachim "Yogi" Reppmann was born in Flensburg, State of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. (Bordertown to Denmark at Baltic Sea – north of Hamburg).  He matriculated at the University of Kiel, where he studied history, American literature, and philosophy. He has written several books on notable Schleswig-Holstein emigrants and the mass migration to the United States; served as a professor of German at St. Olaf and Carleton Colleges in Northfield, Minnesota; and chaired several conferences.  Yogi is a member of RC Northfield.