During the next few days some 34,000 Rotary club presidents will pass their gavel to a new group of leaders. This is a time for them to celebrate more than simply surviving their year of leadership; it is a time of revitalization and rededication. Many have achieved great successes and feel it is a time for a little rest and relaxation, but their success as a club leader can only be measured by how successful their successor is during the next Rotary year.
It is also a time for forgiveness in the hearts of the club members for any poor jokes, unintended slights and unachieved goals during the past Rotary year. I have often heard the mumblings of good riddance by the same people who declined the offer to lead their club during the preceding year. There is no doubt that every club president had at least one bad idea; when I was the president of my club I was an overachiever with several bad ideas. So let us all salute the outgoing president with gratitude and best wishes.
Let us all make a commitment to bring in new members this year and work hard to enhance the experience of current members so we can actually experience membership growth; not because Rotary needs more members and dues, but because there are a lot of things we need to do in our communities. The strength of Rotary is the individual hands, hearts and heads of our membership. We need more resources to make this a better world.
It wasn’t that many years ago that some of our members said we were foolish to take on a challenge like eliminating polio from the world. Adding it all up today has to be a convincing argument that Rotary’s best year ever, internationally and locally, is just beginning on July 1, 2012. So in the words of the infamous cable guy, “lets getter done.”