WOW, it is hard to believe that the first three months of serving as your Club President has come and gone. What a Quarter it has been. During that first meeting I shared a few goals for the year.1) Increase Engagement 2) Inspire & Create Memories Together 3) Enhance Members Experience.
I feel we have made some progress in these areas but still have a long year ahead to make a greater impact and enhance your Rotary experience. I shared with you to “Imagine” the impact Rotary can make on the world as stated by RI President Jennifer Jones.
Two key goals have been to grow our membership and to have outstanding speakers and believe we have made progress on both fronts. Although we have had some natural attrition, we have added two new members and three additional members being processed by the committee. I believe we have positive momentum behind us and encourage every member to try to bring one guest each month. Sadly, we lost one of our longest members this past quarter and that was Gordon Graham.
We had Renee Gonzales the CEO from Long Companies, Chad Kasmer the new Chief of Police and no one can forget the amazing presentation by Mike and Oksana Schulte on their personal experiences with Ukraine. Other speakers included were Jan Lesher our new Pima County Administrator, Susan Dumon from Sun Corridor, Jansen Azarias founder of Higher Ground, our District Governor Anita McDonald and with our largest attendance in years with new basketball coach, Tommy Lloyd.
We also managed to have some fun, fellowship, and service along the way. Alan Rogers coordinated our first mixer of the year at Noble Hops. There was the Hiking Fellowship lead by Bruce Richardson, Golf Fellowship lead by Wayne Meyers, and congratulations to Bruce Tunze who won the 3rd Annual Match Play golf tournament who fought off some tough competition. We just celebrated our first meeting with the new Whiskey Fellowship headed up by Brett Stein and Mitch Pisik.
As Rotarians we profess service above self, and we are back to doing more of that. After many years of not having participated in an international project we helped in the purchase of a new van for the Company in Nogales that we helped start with what is known as “the wheelchair project” expanding their reach into more rural areas. This effort was led by Pat Patton who has forged ties with new organizations to do more projects with Sonora Mexico. In September, many members turned out to work on the DEK project in support of the Boys & Girls Club lead by past president Mark Irvin.
The end of September we capped off the month with an outstanding District Conference which we had 10 Club members attend. It was the first one I attended and know I will be back in the future. I would highly recommend if you have never been to consider attending next year. Last, I would like to thank all of you that have helped to support me in the “Miles for Memories” campaign. Contributions have gone toward members polio/Paul Harris, some to the president’s discretionary fund as well as other great causes supporting Rotary.
As we start on the next quarter of OUR YEAR, I wanted to thank all of you for your support. Thank you for your ideas, suggestions, and friendship. I am proud to be able to serve as your president and of the work that we do together in making the world and our community a better place for all.
