Toastmasters

I enjoyed your article about Toastmasters (Jerry's View, March 29) and your Toastmaster experience. But I feel it is important for me to correct some wrong impressions that readers who are not Toastmasters might have gotten in reading your article.

I liked that you told about the men that were in your group and how they went on to be successful business and professional citizens. Because the vast majority of people who join Toastmasters do so because they realize that being a good communicator is an absolute must if you are to be successful.

Your description of evaluations by your fellow members as being brutal may have been true 50 years ago when all the members were men, but in the modern and enlightened Toastmasters, we teach the members to give evaluations that are positive. They point out the strong points of the speaker along with the things they can work on to improve.

The kinder and gentler Toastmaster experience is undoubtedly the results of the influence that women brought to the club. For now almost 50 percent of all clubs are women and in some clubs it is even higher than that.

On behalf of my Leading Knights Toastmaster club, I have to take exception to your remark that almost all the members in attendance that night were as you put it "on the wintry side of 50." While it is true for myself and three or four other long-time members, most Toastmasters are in the 20 to 50 age group. You can join Toastmasters as young as 18 and you can stay as long as you want, which is why, at 93, Faye Laub is still a member. In Leading Knights we have had a number of young people who early on realized the importance of developing their speaking ability. Two of our most recent examples would be Amelia and Melody Gilbert, who are this year and last year's Miss Burien.

Within the area of coverage of the West Seattle Herald, White Center News and The Highline Times there are more than a dozen clubs that people could join. They can be found on the district Web site, www.Toastmasters-D2.org.

So there are lots of opportunities to belong to a Toastmaster club. But as I tell all the visitors to our club, go out and check the rest, then come back and join the best, Leading Knights. We meet every Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the Burien Elks. If you have questions, you can call me at 767.5890.

Finally, I hope you and Elsbeth come visit us again soon.

Pat Kinsella

White Center