Brian Leech, a Business Meeting and a LobsterFest

Last Week
Brian Leech gave us talk about his early life and his career.  He is 89 and joined our club in 1977 having been a member for a short while in East London.  He gave the impression that he had drifted into Civil Engineering by accident and I was intrigued that he was responsible for Camps Bay High School as  the playing fields basically stick out of the lower slopes of the Twelve Apostles and Table Mountain Sandstone isn't the most stable foundation!
His exploits in the establishment of Lilongwe as capital of Malawi were also highly entertaining. 

Thank you, Brian, for such an entertaining talk.

As the Arts Festival is upon us the next few weeks will be taken up with members of longstanding chatting about themselves.  This was a very good idea of President Lyn's as new members always have to but newer members never really hear of the exploits of those who have been around for a while.

This Week
It's a Business Meeting but it's very much winding down time for the end of the Rotary Year so I am sure it will be more social than anything else.

Computer Problems
My laptop suddenly decided that it was going to slow down below a crawl and do all sorts of funny things.  I have always used Gmail linked with my domain on Outlook so that I can access my emails anywhere and always had my documents backed up in Dropbox.  If it wasn't for that you wouldn't e receiving The Ramble this week.

For many years, the Rotary Club of Grove met at a beloved greasy spoon 6 miles from the city center. Once a week Rotarians “could either have fried chicken or they could have fried chicken. Either-or,” jokes Ivan Devitt, a club past president and Grove’s vice mayor. In 2011, they decided it was time for a change. That move augured a boom time for the club.

“We bounced around three different places before finding the right venue,” a spacious church recreation center where meals are catered by local restaurateurs, says Don Wasson, a club member and past governor of District 6110. Around the same time, a member recommended the club put on a lobster fundraiser. Skeptics insisted that “people aren’t going to pay $60 to come to a lobster dinner,” says Devitt. “But as it turned out, they did” – in droves". 

That first year, more than 300 people showed up – twice as many as expected, says membership chair Jerry Ruzicka. The $35,000 in net proceeds – for a club that had an annual budget of $20,000 – was donated to the local YMCA. “They were in danger of closing,” Ruzicka says. “Now they have 600 regular members, a new building, and they don’t need our financial help anymore.” 

The entire city gets involved in LobsterFest: Numerous volunteers help cook and serve meals. The event allows the club to disburse about $130,000 a year to about 40 charities. And what attendees learn about the club has paid off in new members. 

The club uses the red badge system to identify new members. Even though it’s a small town, people don’t necessarily know one another, says Ruzicka, who implemented the red badge idea about three years ago. “It lets everybody know you’re a special person who needs to be met and invited to join the different things we’re doing in the club.” The extra attention paid to new members “has pretty much locked our back door” to retain them, says Wasson. 

Club members participate in the community in a number of ways, such as volunteering at the botanical garden, the humane society, and an advocacy group for children. Rotarians have also renovated playgrounds, repaired the concrete steps of a women’s shelter, and filled backpacks with food to be handed out to families in need.

The club abandoned a system of having every Rotarian take a turn lining up speakers for meetings. A committee now handles guest programming, and speakers have included well-known university athletics coaches, state governors, and a former U.S. senator – prime catches for a small-town club. “Those kinds of programs make people want to come to your meeting,” Ruzicka says. When executives of local charities address the gatherings, the edict is “no politics, no religion, no requests for money,” he adds. “They know we’re giving back everywhere, so they’re willing to share their story” with a team that keeps its plate full.