Posted by Editor: FDBobko
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The FOGHORN
ROTARY CLUB OF HALF MOON BAY
AUGUST 15,  2024
 
  Annual Visit with District 5150 Governor Steve Wright 
 
Article by Stacy Trevenon
Photos by 

Irwin Cohen introduced Assistant Governor Anne Campell, a retired educator with 40 years experience including teaching and being a principal of middle school, a school district superintendent, chairing a Measure H bond oversight committee for the San Mateo community college district, and San Mateo County Superintendent of Schools. She enjoys travel, reading and “hanging out with Rotarians!” 

Anne introduced District Governor (2024-2025) Steve Wright. She called Steve and wife Colleen “a dynamic duo of service to Rotary.” He is from the Rotary Club of Pacifica and,  after deciding that being club president wasn’t enough he and Colleen co-chaired the district conference for three years and then became PDG Gary Chow’s Chief of Staff. Believing in International Service, he and Colleen with his club had led a Global Grant supporting clean water and adult literacy for three years. “Every level of Rotary you’re thinking about, Steve was there,” she said, before introducing Steve, to a standing ovation.

Steve drew attention to the handout/brochures he had set at each place – inspired by Past District Governor and current Foundation Chair Gary Chow. These contained information about future events at the district level, and about the Grand Slam Award.  It’s new this year: If you are a Major Donor, Bequest Society member, a Paul Harris Society member, and a Polio Plus Society member, then you’re a Grand Slam member.

The brochure contains a Resource Guide, a list of 100-plus names on the District Leadership team 2024-2025 (which includes our own Mitone Griffiths, the District Governor-Elect!) The brochure  also described the Grand Slam Award and gave key dates:  the foundation Amsterdam-Belgium Canal Cruise on Aug. 14-21, the Sept. 7 Membership Summit, the Oct. 12 Foundation event aboard the USS Hornet, World Polio Day (Oct. 24,) the World Peace Conference Jan. 24-26 in Rohnert Park, the District Assembly March 22, the Celebrate Hope in Action district conference in Santa Rosa and the Rotary International Conference on June 21-25 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and relevant Rotary Web sites. 

Steve said that when people hear “district,” they tend to picture a monolith, and when someone had asked him what the district would do with a multimillion-dollar grant for affordable housing, he said the district would nix that, because the district is volunteers. Quoting Paul Harris, he said that “Everybody in Rotary has equal value. Some people just have greater responsibility for a period of time.” 

He said that “we’re big on past district governors,” adding that he only has about 10 and a half months to get there And he’s aware of our Lobsterfest.

He noted that membership is down from 400,000 to about 325,000 members in the U.S. But, our district has grown, for the first time in 5 years, and he encouraged attending the membership summit in early September. Register at rotary5150.org.

Next he spoke of economics: What fuels Rotary is annual fund donations. Every Rotarian Every Year (EREY) is a minimum of $25 per member, and it will be celebrated on the USS Hornet, with live music, barbecue, a guest speaker who is a PDG and who convinced the Rotary Foundation that you could be an Arch Klumpf Society member when you give a quarter of a million dollars to the Foundation, which Arch founded in 1917. Rotarians can do that on a payment plan. Arch Klumpf is a PDG and 30-year Navy veteran who writes military/spy novels; with some characters that “have familiar names in Rotary.”  For example: one fictional mayor of Seattle loves everything having to do with Star Wars – and is named Ron Gin. (laughter ensued.) He encouraged registering for drawings at Rotary5150org or via the foundation, at everyrotarianeveryyear. 

He spoke of Rotary’s theme, which comes from the Rotary International president and district governors. This year’s RI president is Stephanie Urchick, the second female RI president ever (some club members cheered and Steve responded that he liked the sound effects in our club.)  He spoke of how the idea for clean water as a Rotary project came about when someone on an international trip to the Dominican Republic was met by a kid who shouted, “Lady! Show me more of that magic!” 

Now, as adults we realize that magic just doesn’t happen, but it takes a committee, plans, money, effort, time, and “putting our hopes into action.” But it goes farther: Steve confessed (for the newer members) that he stole his theme from the ‘53-‘54 RI President, since if you see a great idea in another club, the highest compliment you can give them is to steal the idea. He pointed out that the new “Hope in Action” pin  has three hands touching; symbolic, since everyone can use an extra hand, especially when doing projects. 

He welcomed new members and urged existing members to help them and re-engage with members we lost touch with during Covid. He encouraged collaboration with other clubs, and involving other organizations. On his pin, the hands are in gloves, symbolizing hands-on projects – “that’s where Rotary makes a real difference in our world.” Every year, the district governor chooses hats or jackets for the district leadership team, and Steve, believing hands-on projects are impactful, gave leather gloves to everyone in the district leadership team and all new presidents, “the ones who are leading  your club” – and chose gloves because Rotary is hands-on. 

Steve has been in Rotary since 1987, and said only 10 percent of the members in the district have been in Rotary longer than he has. Rotary is about leadership and hands-on, but if you’re not able to do that, don’t feel bad, he said, adding that we’ll take checks, credit cards, real estate (everyone chuckled); but we’ll take money as it goes to good use. 

In the Rotary pin, the hands are touching, “because Rotarians touch each other.” Coming to meetings and working on projects is where you get to know your fellow Rotarians, and friendships grow. “The projects provide the sun that we need to reach for the sky,” he said.

He said we come to Rotary because that’s where friends are, it’s a fun and a happy place, where we’re comfortable and at home. All of us are facing challenges in life, such as aging parents, health or finances. When we see friends at Rotary meetings, that’s a chance to provide  friendship to someone who may need it.  The hallmarks of friendship that start at our clubs and flourish with projects, provide us with lifetimes of memories and smiles – “ever so much more important than dollars in the bank account.” 

Steve said that everything we do in Rotary boils down to friends and projects. He shared a story: Anyone hear of Nancy McFeely? Her son shared a quote: “When I was a boy, I would see scary things in the news, and my mother would say, Look for the helpers.” You will always find people who are helping: I call those people Rotarians. And when Rotarians are around, it’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

He shared another thought: a few years ago, at the Rotary International convention in Toronto, he heard Laura Bush and Helen Clark, the second female prime minister of New Zealand, (and administrator of the United Nations development  program,) talk to us as fellow world leaders. He said, “You know what? We are,” and added that there’s not another organization that could have provided 49 delegates to the United Nations chartering in 1945 in San Francisco (Rotary provided 49 delegates.) It’s still the highest NGOC at the U.N., and is in 219 countries and geographical regions; the U.N. only has 195 so we actually have better coverage in this world than the U.N. 

Other organizations could have decided in 1985, he said, that) polio is ridiculous; instead it’s paralyzing, harming 350,000 new kids each year. No other organization, he said, could have taken that down to about 25 cases for the world. We were at 6 last year at this time. But from 350,000, we’re still here, 39 years later, still working on it. 

So, put it together, he called us the helpers in our local neighborhoods, the world leaders in the international community, and yet the average Rotarian, when asked what they do, says, Not much. We provide a little food, we do a little this, a little that. Not much.  Without the passion, the drive, the heart, the love, the effort, the care, without the devotion from each and every Rotarian, we can’t be the helpers in our communities or the leaders our world needs. He said, “If you listen to Jennifer Jones,  our first international president (and I happen to think she’s right), she said, ‘The world needs Rotary now more than ever!’”

Every single Rotary project started with one person: One guy in the Philippines back in the mid-70s said, I don’t want polio in the Philippine Islands anymore! One person started Polio Plus. One person has started every single thing every single club does. One person.

If all you can do is spend an hour a week reading to a child in school, to you that may not seem like much, but what if you were that child? “Fill in that blank! It matters to the person you are helping. And what does that spell in Rotarian? Wonderful!”

Service above self doesn’t have to stop at that door when the bell rings at the end of this meeting, he said. “We can, we should, we must take care of our fellow Rotarians. We’re the ones doing all the good stuff! We gotta take care of ourselves so we can keep doing that!”

And at the end of the day, when our time here on this mortal coil is done – Steve held up a sign with birth and death dates separated by a dash -- The only thing that matters. It doesn’t matter when we are born and when we die what matters is what you do in the dash. “I don’t think anybody will be surprised to think that Rotary is a pretty fine way to fill that dash.” 

He described his Rotary journey: “I’m DG now, I checked all the rules and regulations. Our Manual of Procedure, by the way, in Rotary runs 620 pages. DGs aren’t exempt.  We still have that guide part.”  

And he offered experiences: “We do the district events for three key reasons: They’re a lot of fun: we work hard, we build up our District Designated Funds, our donations to the Foundation; it’s a great way to meet other friends in other clubs throughout the district.  Technical term is networking; I call it, meeting other friends. 

He gave an example of seizing opportunity: “Last time I was President in the Rotary Club of Pacifica, we had a guest speaker come in; she was a head cartographer for a Mayan archeological dig in the Guatemalan jungle. In this particular dig they pushed back the known start of the Mayan civilization by a thousand years. All of the workers on this dig had to come from Carmelita, a little village of 650 people. The only way there was a $10,000 helicopter ride or walking for 7 days in the jungle. Once the workers got to the site, they were there for the dry season. So the professionals and paraprofessionals decided, let’s do some literacy training. We got time, let’s help these folks out, the vast majority of the workers from Carmelita couldn’t write their own names. So I thought, Hey, we’ll do it, international project we’ll give them a check for $500, and the speaker was there talking about the gig. Her name is Josie, she lives in Redwood City when she’s not doing maps in the jungle. Josie came back and said, the village of Carmelita has got this clean water problem, they needed $45,000 to do a clean water project. They knew how to make it sustainable because you had eco-tourists going in to do a major dig, they were doing the same trek through the jungle and they were willing to pay money for clean water. There’s your sustainability. So we said yeah, we can do that! We put together 12 clubs – there’s your networking – all of us working with our district designated funds. This was one grant – last year we did 1200 of these – 12 clubs, we did $49,500. Josie did not tell us she’d been trying to find somebody to help for 10 years. She came to Rotary, and 18 months later … 

“You know the really big impact here? Children under 5 stopped dying. They were losing 1-2 kids per year because of dirty water. There was a loser down there: It was the undertaker. For those of you who don’t know, I was a bill collector for most of my career, and feeling sorry for an undertaker is right up there with feeling sorry for a bill collector.

“Another story for you – my last (college) semester, the professor of this course I had to get into; his wife had just joined the Rotary Club of San Jose. Big club, 400-500 members;  graduated, and moved on, about a year later, and he told a story about a family from Vietnam, the little girl of 3,  who was born with her tongue permanently stuck out of her mouth. Surgery in Vietnam was botched.  A friend brought the case to a professor, who wondered if Rotary could help. They got in touch with me (Steve) and I took the problem to Peter Lagarias (who was the PDG of San Francisco club No. 2) and had spearheaded Rotaplast, which back in the early 1990s was doing cleft lip repair on children in developing countries. Peter went to plastic surgeon Angelo Capozzi, who was chief of plastic/reconstructive surgery at Shriner’s, and a chief of surgery at UC Davis. Angelo arranged visas for that family of the little Vietnamese girl, and got them to the United States  somehow, and to San Jose where they lived for several years because the child needed many surgeries. The parents couldn’t work so he made sure they were fed, and got the surgeries done for free. Steve learned through Linked In of the family in San Jose who had housed that family. Wondering how the little girl was doing, he investigated and found that she had just graduated college in Vietnam. That’s the power of Rotary.

“Rotarians. When a problem is presented to us, we don’t realize that saying ‘No’ is an option. It’s like polio ... Are we going to stop now? Of course not. Rotarians don’t realize that that’s even an option, stopping when we’re this close.”

He quoted the immediate past governor of District 5190: “Being a Rotarian is leaving footprints in the sand where you will never walk.”

He closed with a challenge, look at existing projects, re-energize, think about adding new ones, think about extending this tremendous gift we’ve been given of Rotary membership, think about sharing the magic of Rotary with more people around us, since we could always use more help. Thanking us for the “incredible honor” of being our District Governor,  he also thanked us for being his friends, and fellow Rotarians. 

Enormous applause followed. In appreciation of his service, Steve was given, from Main Street, some olallieberry jam, a jar of honey, some iacopi beans and a pot of risotto.

(Steve Wright’s opening remarks) In front of you, everybody person has a simple handout and a brochure. Credit Gary Chow, he’s the one who came up with this initial idea. I wanted to pass this out to everybody this year. Not only is there a lot of information about future events we’re doing at the district level, and the Grand Slam Award etc., but far more importantly, you have a list of roughly 70, 90, 100 names in here  … When people hear “the district,” they think of this as a monolith. I actually had one person ask me what the district would think of being approached for a multi-million-dollar grant for affordable housing. What would the district say? I said, No, because the district is nothing but volunteers, like you guys in your club, volunteers working at a different level in Rotary. 

Who remembers Paul Harris, the gentleman who founded Rotary in 1905? A quote from Paul Harris I heard recently that I thought was great: Everybody in Rotary has equal value. Some people just have greater responsibility for a period of time

 

CLUB MEETING - AUGUST 15, 2024

This Thursday proved to be quite the day for the Rotary Club of Half Moon Bay, with the induction of two new members and the official visit of the District Governor Steve Wright. 

 At each place were the new pins from District Governor Steve Wright, with the theme of  “HOPE IN ACTION” and three hands – one light tan, one reddish and one brown – meeting in the middle. 

Pledge of Alligience -  Warren Barmore led the Pledge of Allegiance. 

Inspirational Thought The thought for the day came from new member Peggy Airo:  “Never lose sight of who you are … Never forget what’s truly important to you in your life … Always remember there is a purpose to your journey … ”

Induction of New Members

Two new members were inducted: Peggy Airo, whose sponsor was Dianne Bobko, and Shirley Kellicutt, whose sponsor was Clark Hobbie, a relatively new member himself!

Announcements

Next week our speaker will be SMC Supervisor Ray Mueller.

Marble Draw 

The marble draw was held; Bella got it but it was white.nocrying

Closing Thoughts

Irwin’s closing thought to us was, make some good news.   yes