Minutes from Friday, August 15, 2025
Sunrise Toastmasters
This week’s meeting started with a warm welcome from our Vice President of Public Relations, Toastmaster Summer Murphy who reminded us of events that led to the formation of the Black Lives Matter movement and its purpose to recognize imbalances and disparities that particularly affect this group of citizens in our society. This led us into our moment of silence in recognition of the Black Lives Matter movement and the ongoing struggle for racial equality. The introduction was concluded with reminders such as use of the bias flag as a tool toward becoming more conscientious speakers before turning the meeting over to our Toastmaster of the Day, Toastmaster Kendra Hiatt. Kendra led us through a round of introductions for our guests, before introducing the word of the day “circuitous”, defined as taking a circular or winding course- a journey that is not straight, short, nor direct. She noted this can also be the case in situations in which you don’t realize you are on a path to a goal, and used the example of the piecemeal way she found out her daughter was participating in the classroom… no 6th grade… no Middle School… no County Spelling Bee!
Toastmaster Melissa Dutmers introduced our first speaker, Toastmaster Dave Burr who spoke on the topic “IVF and Me.” Dave started out reminding us that one of the President’s campaign promises had been to mandate health insurance cover the cost of in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments, since rescinded earlier this month. He went onto describe the complexity of IVF treatment steps as well of the history of it’s development from 1978 through today. He also related he and his wife’s consideration of it after his wife experienced 2 ectopic pregnancies, ultimately choosing adoption instead. IVF had come a long way during the last 47 years. It is available to more people, though a significant financial investment that may or may not be covered in part by insurance. He concluded with the welcome announcement that his niece and her wife had welcomed a beautiful baby boy through the gift of IVF.
Toastmaster Matthew Choate introduced our second speaker, Toastmaster Kehinde Eniola who was giving her ice breaker speech which focused on how she had chosen her career path, Medicine. Kenny, who grew up in Nigeria, shared that her family had always thought she would be a lawyer because she was such a chatterbox. Her collegiate path had initially started out in the field of Agricultural Economics, where she had been so successful that she was offered the opportunity to change paths to Pharmacy or Medicine. This felt like a crossroads between familiar and comfortable situation to unpredictable and unknown. Kenny’s father helped her make this decision and she embraced the field of Medicine, finding now that it has been a privilege to help heal and serve others. She is thankful for the opportunity to share in others vulnerabilities, their hope and healing and measures her success through compassion and connection.
Table Topics was led by Toastmaster Anu Parvthaneni who embraced the word circuitous by leading us down the winding path of modern day lingo and the sometimes indirect way we come to understand the meaning. Toastmaster Norris Bass guessed that “cap” may mean to cease or “put a lid on it” and we learned that its use referred to a lie or exaggeration. Melissa thought “delulu” referred to delicious and comforting food, and we learned that it was a shortened version of delusion. Toastmaster Md Adnan thought “rizz” may be having a vibe or pretending to be something you’re not, and we learned it meant having charisma. Toastmaster Summer Murphy was right on the money in defining “sis” as meaning suspicious. Toastmaster Yuko Honda surmised “bussin” to be a pleasant & relaxing journey on a bus, and we learned it was used to describe food that is particularly delicious.
We then moved onto the Breakfast of Champions, speech and meeting evaluations. Toastmaster Savvy Murphy served as our General Evaluator, turning it over to Melissa to complete Speaker 1 evaluation and then to Matthew to complete Speaker 2 evaluation. Toastmaster Chang Yu and Toastmaster Tim Murphy filled the Timer and Grammarian roles.
Roles for Friday, August 22 are as follows:
Toastmaster: Matthew
Speaker 1: Dave
Speaker 2: Tina Joe
Table Topics: Stiles
Gen Evaluator: Anu
Evaluator 1: Abdulrahman
Evaluator 2: Norris
Timer: < open >
Grammarian: Kendra
