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Guest Speaker, October 23, 2026

Rick (Elwood) West | Local Author

Elwood West grew up in Pasadena, attending South Shaver and Jensen Elementary Schools, Park View Intermediate, and Sam Rayburn High School.

He will tell you the most important things about that childhood were the school libraries, a movie theater and a mysterious business establishment on Southmore, a church his grandparents helped found on Strawberry Road, and two teachers who took a kid seriously.

Elwood spent the next three decades in the executive ranks of two Fortune 500 companies, working in people strategy, operations, and risk — which is a courteous way of saying he spent thirty years watching how institutions shape what the people inside them come to believe.

In July 2026, he published Don't Think Me Evil: Confession, the first novel in a trilogy, under his own imprint, Sugar Fox Press. He had begun it in the mid-1990s and finished it thirty years later.

Elwood returns to Pasadena in October to talk about where writers come from — and about the teachers and the three books that made a novelist out of him.

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Pasadena Rotary Luncheon Meeting Location

Pappa Yolk's Grill

5824 Spencer Hwy,

Pasadena, TX 77505

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Pasadena

Spotlight

(Speakers 2026-2027)

Pasadena Rotary Club Members

We Need Your Help!

Volunteers Needed for the McDonald's Texas Invitational Basketball Tournament

Honor Flight Houston is a program that takes our WWII, Korean, and Vietnam Veterans to Washington DC, free of Charge. They leave on Friday and return

Saturday evening. The Veterans tour WDC and visit their respective war

memorials. Each flight has 23 Veterans onboard and the guardians. When the

flight arrives at Houston Hobby Airport, we have a welcome home party; in

most cases, our Vietnam Veterans never had a welcome home.

Please come out to Hobby Airport at 9:30 on October 17, 2026, and wear your

red, white, and blue. Make some welcome-home signs and greet our Veterans.

We usually have about 300 Veterans and Patriots welcoming our Veterans.

We meet at Hobby Airport at the Delta and JetBlue check-in counter. Bring

your children, grandchildren, friends, and neighbors.

Please note the time change: our flight will be arriving at 9:45 PM, so arrive

no later than 9:30 PM

If you park at the Parking Spot and tell them you are going to the Honor Flight Welcome Home, they will not charge you for parking, and you can ride the

shuttle.

Please come join us for an awesome experience. Any questions, please let

me know. Please see attached flyer for more information.