District Governor Lew Bertrand’s Visit
This is DG Lew Bertrand’s 65th (and last) official Club visit in District 5280 (not to mention continued attendance at his home Club), after traveling about 5500 miles. (He’s done so well circulating around this newly expanded District, that he still has time to visit them all again before his term ends in June!)
He quoted Rotary International President Sakuji Tanaka (who grew up in Japan during and after World War II and remembers the aftermath of the atomic bomb), saying the concept of peace differs among different people and cultures, but service to others is a way of life that unites us all. In Myanmar, where Rotary and other service organizations were expelled many years ago by the military government, Rotarian JT Warring of the LA5 Club initiated a clean-water project for orphanages in 2005, after noting on a brief visit that the children were drinking contaminated water. Myanmar’s government is now starting to open up to the outside world again, Rotary will soon become reestablished there, and Mr Warring has received Rotary International’s “Service Above Self” award.
DG Lew related an incident he remembers many years ago, when he was a guest speaker at a Lions Club; he recognized the owner of the facility there and asked him why he wasn’t wearing his Lions pin, and he replied that he was not a member because he had never been asked! Within several weeks, he became a Rotarian under Lew’s sponsorship. The most important principle for promoting Rotary membership is to ask people! All of us know good people who are not Rotarians but could become future Rotarians if asked.
Lew remembers a school classmate who had become sick, was admitted to the hospital, and died of polio the next morning. Parents in the 1950s were fearful of letting their children go to public places, even to school. In the 1970s, Rotarians in the Philippines developed the idea of immunizing some village children against polio, when there were 350,000 cases per year. This was expanded internationally in Rotary, and PolioPlus was formed. In the latest Gates Foundation funding challenge for polio, Rotarians met the $200 million goal by January 2012, 6 months early, and Bill Gates was so impressed that he donated another $50 million check. India is now polio-free, and only 3 more countries have cases. The Rotary Foundation promotes a donation goal of “Every Rotarian Every Year”, to finish the challenge of worldwide eradication of polio.
As an organization, we can leverage our ideas far beyond what an individual can achieve, changing lives by service and making the world a better place. DG Lew closed with some lines from his Noah’s Ark philosophy. We are all in the same boat. Plan ahead. Build on high ground. No matter what storm comes, you can survive it. Noah’s Ark was built by amateurs, and the Titanic was built by professionals!