A year of leading the way

Beginning the 1st of July of last year and ending with the 30th of June, it was a year of leading from the front for Yours Truly. Yes, I have completed a one-year term as President of the Rotary Club of Tulsa Will Rogers. Commonly known as Will Rogers Rotary, it is one of the 79 clubs in Rotary District 6110 which takes in northeast Oklahoma, northwest Arkansas, southwest Missouri and southeast Kansas. District 6110 is home to around 4000 Rotarians, 28 of whom are active Tulsa Will Rogers Rotarians representing a microcosm of the district. Rotary is a diverse organization and includes many long established business persons, professionals of all types, public servants, elected officials, many retirees and young up and comers just starting out. Even now looking back on the past year, it boggles my mind as to why a very upstanding and responsible group of Rotarians would elect Moi, a once skinny-well-fed longhaired practicing Dudeist, as their president. At the same time, I can think of few things more appropriate for a blogger whose Internet alter ego is defined by the moniker Route66Kid. Route 66 is after all known as the Will Rogers Highway. More on that later.

Rotary International is a worldwide service organization that in the past year after the end of Pandemic has caught up with and matched Lions Clubs International in membership strength numbering 1.4 million. Rotary has seven major areas of focus which are peace and conflict preservation/resolution, disease prevention and treatment, water sanitation, maternal and child health, basic education and literacy, economic and community development, and environment. Most local club service projects fall within the purview of one or more of these focus areas. During my year as Club President we held volunteer evolutions at several local nonprofit agencies including Kendall-Whittier Food Pantry, Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma and Emergency Infant Services. Most of our club’s volunteer hours however were served at a Rotary affiliated organization, Medical Supplies Network Incorporated.

MSNI is located half a block off Old Route 66 in east Midtown Tulsa. It is dedicated to shipping surplus medical supplies and refurbished/repurposed medical equipment to health care facilities abroad that are in need of material support. Past destinations include Haiti, Mali, the Marshall Islands, Samoa, the Philippines, several places in the rural United States and Ukraine. I am proud to say that members of Will Rogers Rotary have been involved in shipping three of the 14 containers of medical supplies to Ukraine since February 2022. There have been several local expatriate Ukrainians who have helped us with loading those containers. Our efforts have been not only getting noticed by but also receiving favorable coverage from the local print and TV news media.

As a club president exhorting others to step up and accept all volunteer opportunities, I stepped up and assisted the MSNI director when needed to retrieve donated equipment. Half of the volunteer hours I logged at MSNI were individual volunteer days during the week. The rest were club work days and assisting the collective efforts of all to load those Ukraine-bound containers. We also were afforded an opportunity to volunteer at our main beneficiary institution, Will Rogers College Middle and High School. When we were made aware of the need and the word went out, I stepped up and volunteered to help the School Nurse with administrative work once or twice a month during the school year. Providing this volunteer service enabled the nurse to do other things more important like vision and hearing screenings. It is understood that Tulsa Public Schools could expend the funds and buy a computer program to do the tedious administrative job I was doing, but since a Rotarian was volunteering at no cost it counted as a win-win arrangement. The time I spent working in the school nurses’ office actually constituted the lion’s share of my volunteer hours this past year.

Our club as a whole also did well in terms of logging volunteer hours such that it can be fairly said that Will Rogers Rotary punched above its weight in that aspect of engagement. For the record, as a President striving to lead from the front, I put my volunteerism exhortations where my mouth was and logged well over 100 volunteer hours this past year. Not only did that generate an enhanced visibility and a positive sort of attention for the club, it also got Yours Truly noticed, mostly by members of the club and district leadership. When I was presented with the below token of appreciation for those hours of service, I was honestly humbled as it was again something never sought nor expected.

Throughout the my year as president we hosted quite an eclectic array of guest speakers including elected officials, chairs of and representatives from several nonprofit organizations, authors, community activists, Rotary District officers and a local TV personality. We even hosted a group of judges from the nation of Mongolia. The most exhilarating of them all though was my final meeting as club president. Although I had little to do with making it happen other than supporting and promoting the proposal, key members of Will Rogers Rotary managed to secure an official partnership with the Tulsa Route 66 Alliance. As was mentioned above, Route 66 has been known as the Will Rogers Highway since 1952. Will Rogers Rotary has long been known as the friendliest club in one of the foremost districts of the absolute finest service organization in existence. Who better to put a friendly face on such an institution with a popular nationwide alure and international appeal? It would stand to reason we would be natural partners anyway, but that big check made it official. It was the best most fitting way to end my final meeting as Club President of Will Rogers Rotary. It felt like the last time up to bat that the club hit a grand slam and it left everyone, especially Yours Truly, with a sustained feeling of euphoria.

I have volunteered for other organizations off and on for several years. The true beauty of Rotary is that it is apolitical, non-religious and totally inclusive. The absence of tribalism gives it a special shine. It is said that there are no strangers in Rotary, only friends you haven’t met yet. If there are any regrets I’ve been carrying around as I finish my fourth year of membership, one would be that I did not discover Rotary sooner. Rotary’s values are a spot on match for my own. Those values are stated in the Rotary 4-Way Test and recited at the end of every meeting:

Thank you for reading.