If there was a theme to the Coastal Club meeting of April 30, it had to do with the perils of human existence. The tornadoes in Maryland the previous day reminded Chaplain Mary Jo Zimmerli of similar storms she and her husband Bob had gone through in Georgia. She related how a three-year-old girl, who survived such a storm, was asked if she had been frightened. Her family, she explained, had taken shelter in a hole in the ground, but she had not been afraid because "my Daddy was on top of us." The Chaplain concluded, "That response should remind us all that God is always with us. We do not have to be afraid either."

The speaker for the program was Ann Hunt, the daughter and granddaughter of missionaries to China, where she was born. It wasn't nature that caused the dangers in the lives of her family, but the warring Nationalists and Communists. She lived about 90 miles from Beijing in Pao Ting, where her father headed the hospital. Among the things this very interesting speaker recalled were the dust, cold, noise, and smells of her town. There was very little greenery along its streets because families lived in walled compounds. By age five, because her first language was Chinese, she could dicker with pedi-cab drivers about their fares. At that time, some women's feet were bound as a sign of beauty. "That child will never get married," her nursemaid or amah told her mother, "with [unbound] feet like that." On Christmas day of 1947, before her mother intervened, she and her brothers watched soldiers bayoneting each other because they had run out of ammunition. Today her mother is a patient at the Gregory Wing at St. Andrews Village.

During this meeting, President George Fotos described the preparations for the annual Honors Luncheon, which will be held on May 28 at the Tugboat. Funding for this affair will be raised by the food sale on May 11 at the Y. Birthday wishes were sung to Avonne Coleman, June Homer, Edith Lewis, Marion Mac- Krell, Hilda May, Maria Poore, Thelma Sherman, and Peggy Stover. Guests at this meeting were Ruth Levinson and Pat LaVoie. The program on May 14 will be the reading of selections from Southport Civil War soldier Jaruel Marr's diary by Ron Orchard, docent at the Hendricks Hill Museum.