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Tom Rosten (right) gives an impromptu talk at a recent Tracy Toastmasters meeting, while David Dale (far left) and David Goad break up over the humor. Sam Matthews / Our Town

Laura Strickland, 30, a five-year Tracy resident, stepped behind the lectern in the meeting room at Perko’s Cafe on a recent Friday morning — and began to speak.

She told of her life, growing up in New Mexico, moving to California seven years ago and then to Tracy two years later, living with her husband, Shawn, a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory employee, and their family dog while commuting to psychology classes at Argosy University in Alameda.

Details of her life story were interspersed with humorous remembrances that drew laughter from those present. In closing, she received hearty applause from the audience of some 20 people.

Strickland’s talk was her first — called an “icebreaker” — as a member of the Tracy Toastmasters Club.
Later in the breakfast meeting, evaluator Tom Rosten, a Toastmasters veteran, gave Strickland high marks for her maiden voyage as a speaker, offering a few gentle suggestions for improvement.

Her experience of overcoming jitters associated with giving her first speech and having it evaluated is at the heart of what Toastmasters is all about.

“The club is rich in diversity and provides a safe haven for both beginners and experienced speakers to practice their skills and build their confidence,” said David Goad, who was the Toastmaster at the recent meeting.

The 28 members of the Tracy Toastmasters Club will celebrate 15 years of their weekly public-speaking efforts Friday, during an anniversary breakfast meeting at Perko’s. City Councilwoman Evelyn Tolbert, a charter member of the present incarnation of the club, will be the principal speaker. Several present and past members also will speak, Goad said.

One of those speakers will be Mike Mikkelsen, who was the driving force in establishing the Tracy Toastmasters Club in 1992 and is still active in the organization.

Mikkelsen, one of four speakers at the recent meeting, said he joined Toastmasters primarily to sharpen his communication skills in dealing with insurance clients.

He recalled losing his job when a local insurance agency folded, but after some careful thought, he and his wife decided to open their own agency “and haven’t looked back.”

“If it hadn’t been for the self confidence derived from this organization, I don’t think we would have made it,” Mikkelsen said.

Members in the audience later evaluated all four prepared speeches, and others evaluated five shorter impromptu talks.

“Evaluations are an important part of any Toastmasters meeting,” said Laura Schulz, club president. “The evaluators listen to the speeches very closely, give positive feedback and offer tips for improvement.”

The speaking and evaluating have been going on sporadically in Tracy for a half-century. Toastmasters was originally active in Tracy in the 1950s and 1960s. Meetings were at the Pig Pen restaurant, and the club sponsored a Speechmasters Club at Deuel Vocational Institution. But in the 1960s, the club faded from the scene. A brief resurrection came in the late 1980s, when Barbara Edwards organized a group that met first at the First Presbyterian Church and later at the Tracy Inn Coffee Shop, but that group disbanded within several years. Mikkelsen helped organize the current club 15 years ago.

Edwards was at the recent Toastmasters meeting, the first she had attended in several years. Goad asked her to be one of the members making impromptu speeches on an assigned surprise topic during “Table Topics.”

Her speech, in line with the topic of the day, “Eulogy,” lamented the closing of the Tracy Inn Coffee Shop, the location of Toastmasters meetings for several years.

Other table-topics speakers, talking extemporaneously on the “Eulogy” topic provided by David Dale, table topics master, covered the death of a family cat, the end of playing football, the death of a family dog and the demise of Congress as an effective legislative body.

That final impromptu speech was given by Rosten, who said of Congress, “It’s not quite dead yet, but the way it’s acting, it’s dying.”

His talk, spiced with humor, was judged by members to be the table topics winner.

There will be more table topics sprung on members and more prepared speeches delivered at Friday’s meeting. If the recent meeting is any indication, Toastmasters will be around a lot longer than 15 years this time.

• To learn more about Toastmasters, call David Goad, 830-7101.