L-R: Jamey Mitchell, Gary Grubbs, and Erin Granberry.
Thank you to actor/writer Gary Grubbs for providing our program on Tuesday.
President Jamie Mitchell presided over today’s meeting. Mallory Donald gave today’s invocation. Mark Killingsworth led us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Thanks to Jamie Mitchell and Wes Brooks who served as our greeters today.
Wes filled in for Brandon Hodges and thanked those who helped with today’s meeting and then introduced today’s guests. Scott Hummel has Gary Roberson as his guest today. Bill McLeod has Chandra Crane as his guest. Cole Gressett has Joe Bost and Jim Gren as his guests today. Gerry Gilder has his wife Nancy as his guest and Ben Donald has Juan Berites as his guest.
Jamie then inducted Mit Cole as our club’s newest member and thanked Mallory Donald for bringing him to the club. Mit works at The First. He played football for LSU during his four years of college there. He is married and has a two-year-old child. He also has a small cattle farm in Jones County. He says he likes Hattiesburg very much and is looking forward to his Rotary service.
Mark Killingsworth invited Rotarians to participate in the First Annual Road to Recovery Event which is coming up on December 15. The money raised from the event will be used to benefit Jeffrey’s Fund which assists local residents by offering grants to those who cannot afford addiction recovery programs. The fund is administered by the Greater Pine Belt Community Foundation. For more information call 601-261-3371 or email steve@heritage-umc.org.
Erin Granberry then introduced today’s guest speaker, Gary Grubbs. Grubbs left the Hattiesburg area in 1978 and moved to Los Angeles to become a writer. Instead, he became an actor. He and his wife moved back to the Hattiesburg area on 9/11/2002. He recently got back to beginning the writing career he wanted to start back in 1978. Since picking the pen back up he has sold six screenplays.
He has been in some 200 movies and television shows. In his very first acting job, he had to make an arrest. He was somewhat surprised to have to arrest Henry Fonda. He also has worked with Elizabeth Taylor, Tommy Lee Jones, and Clint Eastwood and nine other academy award winning actors. He and Mark Harmon starred in the very first episode of NCIS. He played an attorney in the recent “Free State of Jones” movie with Matthew McConaughey. Although not a singer, he was asked to re-record the ninth best-selling song, Davey Crockett.
He and his son are now pitching a new game show they developed. Gary is in hopes one of the networks will pick the show up in the near future. He penned a play recently that was adapted into a screenplay and bought by Netflix to be a part of the Dolly Parton Anthology series. The movie recently completed filming in Atlanta.
As today’s meeting concluded Jamie thanked today’s speaker and announced that the club will not meet on December 25 nor on January 1st. He has also confirmed dates and times for the club’s Salvation Army bell ringing and will get that information out to the members via email. Jamie the adjourned the meeting with our motto, service above self.