A tribute to Kathy

Spinnaker’s 18 March 2025 meeting was “a tribute to Kathy”, a long time member who passed away suddenly in early March. We managed to link many parts of our meeting to remembering Kathy, including handing out French Macarons, Kathy’s favourite baking dish.

Our Grammarian Jocelyn said she was looking for “lively words”, and in her report listed some examples she heard: “brutal fringe”, “trepidation”, “monumental step”, “playacting”, “a tad harrowing”.

Table Topics Master Dieter’s theme was “in Rememberance of Kathy” and he asked each speaker to talk about an aspect of life, such as decisionmaking, staying positive, changing careers. Our guests chose to introduce themselves and how they came to be at Toastmasters.

Speech 1 by Jacqui was from Level 1 of Visionary Communication, “I’m fine!”, a speech with a purpose. Jacqui wanted to raise awareness on how to spot someone having a stroke, and what to do about it. Evaluator Dale said Jacqui excelled at storytelling, laced with statistics, and clearly educated us on how to identify a stroke victim. She also suggested we download the app Stroke Riskometer and use it on ourselves.

Speech 2 by Mike was introduced and evaluated by Ron. Mike’s purpose was to compare and contrast a coach and a mentor, and in this speech he identified two people in his working life who he could say were a coach and a mentor. Ron suggested Mike give us an example of a lesson from both people that he had learnt.

General Evaluator Jocelyn loved the theme of remembering Kathy, and the nice touch of handing out the French Macarons at the start of the meeting. She had heard lots of lively words and was pleased to see our guests were involved and our roles were explained to them.

Best speaker – Katina, in talking about Kathy
Best evaluator – Dale, in talking about Jacqui’s speech on strokes.

If you are keen to attend a Spinnaker Toastmasters club meeting, you are most welcome. Just email us on spinnaker@toastmasters.org.nz and let us know you’re coming. We’ll get back to you pronto!