The Rotary Club of
New York
June 30,
2003
Fellow
Rotarians,
Our next New
York Rotary meeting on July 1st will be Transition Day with
President Silvio Amori as our speaker. This is Silvio’s last day as President
of our legendary club and it is time to reflect on the last year. Silvio has
had a successful year as President. During his leadership, we have had the
following accomplishments:
·
50 new members in 2002-2003. Our
membership is now 207, which is the highest in many years. You can see pictures
at www.NYRotary.org
from the recent inductions of Sandra Navidi and Alessio Cloni as new members on June 24th.
·
We have had many fellowship days.
·
Tremendous success with the International
Breakfast Meetings thanks to Sylvan Barnet and Giorgio Balestrieri
·
Rotary After-Hours every third Thursday
of the month has been very successful thanks to David Del Monte.
·
Many great speakers thanks to Larry
Parks.
·
The donation of $100,000 to Polio Plus
thanks to Silvio Amori, Morton Eydenberg and the New York Rotary Foundation
·
5,000-6,000 visits per month to the New
York Rotary website from Rotarians around the world. I would like to thank
Silvio for his great support.
·
We had a successful District 7230
Conference thanks to President Elect Greg Lynch.
·
The Rotary Club of New York helped me
create a very successful Group Study Exchange Program my thanks to President
Silvio, Greg Lynch Ivan Vosloo and the New York Rotary Foundation.
You can read
more about Transition Day in the latest Bulletin at http://ussterilizer.com/bulletin_07-01-2003.pdf
(click on
the link).
Silvio’s legacy as President is also preserved on our website at www.nyrotary.org/president_silvio/president-silivio.html.
Lilian Coury has written the Reporter of the Week in the Bulletin.
Thank you Lilian for such a well-written and detailed account of Dr. Stephen
Kagan’s speech. Lilian has been a member of our legendary club since 1999 and
she will become a Director of the Board starting on July 1st.
Lillian’s classification is coaching and she is President of Pegasus Pathways,
Inc.
The Bulletin
announces the birthdays for Jack Haikala on June 29th, Allison
Alessi on June 30th and Kemal Peker on July 1st, David
Serko on July 3rd and Helmut Fischer on July 9th. Happy
Birthday to all of you! For those, who are interested in astrology, we have
many members born in the Cancer sign. By the way, my father was a Cancer too.
He was born on the 4th of July, the same day as our great nation. If
astrology applies to countries, I guess that our country was also born a
Cancer.
Silvio has
done it again! The Board of Directors has just approved another two new
members. They are Liberio Romano and Denise Scotto. Liberio’s classification is
Infrastructure Services and Denise’s classification is International Advocacy.
Welcome to our club! There is always room for extra members. Thank you Silvio!
Last week, I wrote about a historic event in Rotary’s relation
with the United Nations. You can also read about Rotary’s involvement with the
UN and other humanitarian organizations on Rotary International’s website at www.rotary.org/aboutrotary/network.html
Here is different example of Rotary fellowship interaction. I
received the following excited message from Past President Helen Reisler:
Dear Matts,
I am sending you this E-mail I received from
LOU DIPAOLO today, which made my heart sing. I would like to share it with
other Rotarians to confirm the point, once again, that we in Rotary are all
links to one another. We are an integral part of a chain that reaches out all
over the world to people in need. When you act upon a vision, you cannot
lose patience or become discouraged. Working as a team helps that vision to
become alive and grow, sometimes in the most unexpected ways.
The situation that Lou is referring to began
during my Presidency when I attended”Habitat For Humanity" breakfast that
my daughter had invited me to. There were over 600 people in that room and the
stories we heard from those involved, as well as the videos we saw, left no
doubt in my mind that this was a Rotary project. I asked Lou, Clarence Plummer
and Matt Salerno to become involved and connected them to Habitat's Executive
Director. Regardless of the fact that our main focus was diverted to
"9/11" that year, somehow, these 3 motivated Rotarians kept the ball
rolling and this was the result. We helped to build comfortable and beautiful
houses for some deserving people in one of the poorest sections in NYC; the
Italian Trade Commission became involved, as well as the Italian Tile Industry
who donated the materials. All this from one early morning breakfast.
I continue to encourage our members to keep
involved in the "outside world",
to be alert and ask yourselves if there is a potential connection to our Rotary
goals, and always, always,---take pictures !!
Yours in Rotary,
Helen Reisler
Here is the message from Lou Di Paolo that Helen
was so excited about:
Dear Helen,
I loved seeing your
photo in the District newsletter. And 3 times!!
I have a letter for
you from Roland Lewis to our Habitat for Humanity committee,
which owes its existence to you. You created it during your term. Then we had
911 and our committee focused elsewhere. However, Matthew Salerno, one of our
committee members was able to secure for HH a substantial donation of tile. The
value of the tile is not the issue but you would want to know it was approx.
$70000-$80000.
The letter from
Roland describes what happened. I ask that if you develop these public relations
for Rotary and our club you get the facts also from Matthew Salerno. He
is in the Hillier office in Princeton at 609 452 8888. He can tell
you the whole story and lead you to the Italian Trade Commission who is
thrilled with our attention as we are theirs. This is truly a global event,
which Italian Rotarians would enjoy knowing about.
I am faxing the
letter to you now at the number from our Roster. I know you will know what to
do with this great news.
Good luck and keep
up our beautiful PR.
Your cub reporter
and news scout,
Lou
You can see that the legacy of Past President Helen Reisler lives
on.
I received the following message from Aili
McConnon a few days ago, where she thanks our New York Rotary Club for a
donation:
June 25, 2003:
Dear Rotarians:
The Legacy Project would like to heartily
thank the New York Rotary Foundation of the Rotary Club of New
York for their donation to The Legacy Project Anthology--a 9/11
responsive project designed to promote compassion for the victims and survivors
of such calamities. Research for the virtual and print anthology is
ongoing. Please visit www.legacy-project.org and join the
citizens of over fifty countries who are accessing our web site to learn
more about The Legacy Project. Many thanks. Keep up the great work
Rotarians.
Sincerely,
Aili McConnon
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Aili McConnon
Princeton ReachOut'56 Fellow
The Legacy Project
810 Seventh Avenue, 31st Floor,
New York, NY, 10009.
212-843-0372 phone
212-843-0371 fax
As Alili said, you can see our New York Rotary
dollars at work by visiting the Legacy Project’s website at www.legacy-project.org.
Even though the Group Study Exchange Project for 2002-2003 is
finished, the relationships that we developed still remain. My wife Sundra and I
just received the following message from Dia Van Staden, who was one of the
South African team members:
Hi Matts and Sundra!
Yes! I did receive the t-shirts. Thank you so
much! They arrived on a day when I was "homesick" for your side of
the country and that was excellent timing!
I have just completed the Miss Limpopo Pageant
and had the best show in eight years. Now, maybe I can start reflecting on the
five weeks in USA, because there has not been time to do so. I need to spend
quality time in doing so!
I'll be going to Zimbabwe for the weekend and
look forward to see for myself what is going on there.
How are things on your side? Thanks Matts, I
receive the Rotary info regularly.
I will soon - end of July - leave my company
to start my own event management and training company. I will also run
functions and projects for charity organizations in doing so.
I will soon forward information on what the
charity originations on this side need seriously to be able to cope with their
daily functioning.
Keep up the good work and regards to Rotary
New York District 9250 from SA!
Love
Dia
Thank you
Thank you Dia! It was great to hear from you. Have you thought
about joining Rotary since you returned? It is great to have access to such a
fellowship when you start your own business.
By the way, Dia was the only woman in the South African team, but
she could whack any of the other team members, if she wanted too. She grew up
with many brothers, so she knows how to hold her own.
Now that our Rotary year has come to an end, I would like to thank
our outgoing District Governor Bob Benson. His support to me in my capacity of
GSE Chairman has been indispensable. Bob is a low key and soft-spoken person,
but his actions speak volumes. Through no fault of his own, his term as
District Governor was not an easy one, but he resolved the issues with a lot of
patience and tenacity. Thank you Bob for a great Rotary year!
Don't forget
to reserve your table for our next meeting. You can reserve via e-mail to our
office at ny.rotary@verizon.net, or call Andreas or Ana at 212-633-1311. You
can also fax in the RSVP form, which you can download at http://ussterilizer.com/rsvp_07-01-2003.pdf. Our fax number is 212-633-1954. At our next meeting,
the culinary staff at the Princeton Club will serve us Salmon.
I recommend
that you visit our New York Rotary website every week at www.NYRotary.org.
Rotary is about having fun
and do good things!
Internet
Communication Officer
The
Rotary Club of New York
Chairman
Group
Study Exchange
Rotary
District 7230
Ambassador
of History
The
History of Rotary Project
This newsletter has also been posted on our
website at www.NYRotary.org.
In order to read the
PDF file of the Bulletin-on-the-Web, you need the latest version of the Acrobat
Reader (Version 5.0). If you don't have Acrobat Reader 5.0, you can download it
for free from the web at:
You can find the
following interesting websites at:
1.
New York
Rotary Club at www.NYRotary.org/.
2.
The History of Rotary at
www.rotaryhistory.org/
3.
Rotary District 7230 at www.rotarydistrict7230.org
4.
District 7230 Group
Study Exchange Project at www.nyrotary.org/GSE7230/
5.
Rotary
Youth Leadership Awards at www.rotaryryla.com
6.
Rotary
Radio every Tuesday 5-6 PM EST or 2-3 PM PST at http://12.162.161.64/cart/ProductList.asp?SearchFor=Rotary+Radio&x=36&y=6
7.
Matts
Ingemanson, Helen Reisler and Jim Thompson from the New York Rotary Club were
interviewed on Rotary Radio Tuesday July 9, 2002.
http://12.162.161.64/cart/ProductDetail.asp?PR_ProductID=329
You need Windows Media Player to listen to
Rotary Radio. Windows Media Player is included with Windows Millennium and
Windows XP. If you use Windows 95 or Windows 98, you can download Windows Media
Player for free from Microsoft.
Click here to download Windows Media Player