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Lucky me…Rick Foster was not able to make the meeting, and Editarian Chair, Kevin Schumacher gave me the nod to fill in as Editarian for the day. This was our weekly meeting, yes, but it was a very special meeting – an historic meeting with 2015-16 Rotary International (RI) President, K. R. Ravindran (or, President Ravi, as he likes to be addressed) and his lovely wife, Vanathy, having taken the time from their travels and busy schedule to come to Lansing, Michigan to join us as our Rotary Club of Lansing’s Centennial Celebration continues on till the end of the month.
The event got underway with Lansing Rotary President Lisa Smith calling to order her last meeting of the year at 12:15pm sharp, with a substantially large group of Club members, dignitaries, guests and visitors congregating in the southeast 1 st -floor exhibition hall of our home meeting place, the Lansing Center. A significant Brexit vote loomed in the U.K., renowned photographer Bill Cunningham lay gravely ill in NYC from a recent stroke, and the lead in the U.S. Presidential Race was flip-flopping at the mere hint of change given national and global news. But in Lansing, all eyes were on Lansing Rotary and its distinguished native Sri Lankan guest.
President Lisa described the Centennial “100-year” theme that underpinned the actions and many events of Lansing Rotary over the past year or so, e.g., a goal of 100 hours of community service. Lansing Rotary also showcased a float for the most recent Silver Bells in the City event hosted by the City of Lansing.
Past District 6360 Governor and Lansing Rotarian, Clyde Carnegie spoke of the Spirit of Rotary and Peace as his timely and heart-felt Invocation covered the worldly tenets of urban, agricultural, cultural structure that we as Rotarians must strive to maintain and even then to overhaul when necessary. He alluded to the importance of goodwill and to the generations to come, and reverence of, for and to our youth.
It was with reverence that our Hall of Rotarians, guests, visitors and dignitaries honored our great Nation with the singing of our National Anthem, followed by Sri Lanka’s National Anthem in honor of President Ravi and his wife’s visit to Lansing Rotary.
Our lunch was delicious as usual – a tossed salad, chicken and mashed potatoes as the main course with iced tea, and cookies for dessert – and was specially plated in honor of this landmark meeting and all the dignitaries in attendance. Many of us worked up an appetite earlier touring Impression 5 Science Center and the Lansing Rotary-funded (our part is $250,000) work-inprogress, the Water Project and Water Wall, with Executive Director Erik Larson. The tour was followed by “water” words from President Lisa and President Ravi, emphasizing the importance of water globally. Kurt Guter and Centennial Chair Mark Hooper gave their support to the event, while Public Image Chair Melissa Nay and her committee members greeted guests and dignitaries.
Next, President Lisa introduced the many dignitaries attending this special meeting to help us celebrate our 100th year. Past and present Rotary leaders, District and Assistant District Governors and area Rotary Presidents and President-elects honored us with their presence. Letters of congratulations included those that came to us from President Obama, Michigan legislators, Ingham County governmental bodies and City of Lansing Mayor, Virg Bernero. Of note were the dozen or so Special Proclamations speaking to our Centennial Celebration and on display near the exhibition hall entrance.
The list of Rotary dignitaries is lengthy, but given this milestone meeting I think it noteworthy to share that list here [I apologize if I inadvertently missed anyone]:
District Leadership Club Leadership
Richard J. Briscoe, District Governor (D.G.) Bill Marr, Pres. Delta Waverly
Teresa Brandell, District Governor-Nominee Carrie Hindman, Pres. Haslett-Okemos
Terry Allen, Assistant Governor, Area 2, Past D.G. Malinda Barr, Pres. Elect, Haslett-Okemos
Marjorie Haas, Assistant Governor, Area 6 James Egan, Pres. Jackson
Nathan Triplett, Assistant Governor, Area 13 Doug Barber, Pres. Elect, Jackson
William Diamond, Past District Governor Jim Cupper, Pres. Kalamazoo
Special Music, a treasured and weekly highlight of our Lansing Rotary Club, featured the powerful voice of Matt Eldred, our guest tenor, accompanied by the musical talent of our own Lansing Rotarian John Dale Smith on the piano. Two pieces were performed, and featured to dream “The Impossible Dream” from Man of La Mancha (1972), music by Mitch Leigh and lyricist Joe Darian.
With that, President Lisa returned to the podium and introduced a video produced especially for the Rotary Club of Lansing’s Centennial Anniversary and for this landmark meeting. The video captured the drive and leadership behind our Club’s Centennial Celebration, in large part, as President Lisa named those responsible for bringing this event to fruition, recognizing among others, Past Lansing Rotary President Jeff Crippen, who got the ball rolling with the seed of the Centennial idea a couple years ago. This led up to today’s momentous Centennial meeting, which in part was sparked by the friendship that began so many years ago between Lansing Rotarian and Past President Jack Bates and our revered visitor and keynote presenter from the other side of the world, current RI President Ravi. It is fortuitous, despite Jack not having been able to attend, that this very year President Ravi presided over RI’s 107th Annual Convention in Seoul, South Korea. As it were, the Korean Peninsula is a land and subject near and dear to veteran Jack’s heart going back to the days of the Korean Conflict, a topic on which Jack and I have spoken several times given that my wife is Korean-born and I a veteran of a later time, having served near Seoul.
It was at the beginning of this friendship that the subject of the 2004 Sri Lanka tsunami had come up, when President Ravi shared his project to rebuild the schools with Jack. The idea of “kids helping kids” and raising funds to help rebuild the schools ravaged by that fateful natural catastrophe resounded strongly for Lansing Rotarian Jack and fit into the Rotary creed of Service Above Self and, in particular, the mission of Lansing Rotary.
The video segued perfectly into Past Lansing Rotary President and Chair of the Day, John Pence’s introduction of our special and honored dignitary, RI President Ravi. John emphasized the enormous size and reach of RI, with 33,000 clubs and 1.2million members in 210 countries. RI operates to serve others through the use of matching grants and scholarship programs worldwide. As well as having founded Printcare PLC and heading it as CEO, President Ravi has taken leadership roles in many other organizations and projects, local and national/international, most notably having chaired the above-mentioned Schools Reawakening project formed in 2004 and therein helping Rotary District 3220 (Sri Lanka) to raise more than $12million to aid 14,000 children in continuing their education at 20-plus schools rebuilt in the aftermath of the tragic tsunami.
President Ravi and his wife, Vanathy, have two children and one grandchild, and have been married since 1975. They are major donors to the Rotary Foundation, and count the eradication of polio worldwide as among their greatest missions, with the last case of polio in Sri Lanka having occurred in 1994. He is a third-generation Rotarian, having joined at the age of 21, and is a past RI Board Director, a past Trustee on the Rotary Foundation Board and has served as Treasurer to RI.
 First and foremost, President Ravi cited the impressive growth and the resulting plethora of changes in RI since its start in 1905. By 1916 and the inception of the Rotary Club of Lansing, the total number of Rotary clubs had already dramatically increased, with our Club being the 232nd club to emerge. Administratively, RI now boasts a staff of approximately 800, with 250 staff members being employed globally outside of the RI headquarters in Evanston, Illinois, and 100 of those working at an RI satellite location in India alone. To assist RI President Ravi, RI’s General Secretary and Executive Staff oversee the staff and run the day-to-day world-wide operations from the Evanston headquarters.
RI’s workload varies from the necessary but time-consuming job of sorting out and crediting the multitude of donations of all sizes from multiple donors…to communication, technology, legal services, financial and general management of its worldwide leadership role in connecting with other service and world organizations and leaders, including setting goals and creating such critical missions as PolioPlus, and then maintaining those connections.
President Ravi reiterated the story of the friendship that he and Lansing Rotarian Jack Bates rekindled at the recent RI Annual Convention in Seoul, and with that meeting having set in motion all leading up to his being here in Lansing today to join in our Centennial Anniversary Celebration. He named Jack Bates and the Rotary Club of Lansing as the first to respond to his call for help and donations in relief of the tsunami that hit Sri Lanka in 2004.
Raising funds to help Sri Lankan school-children through the Schools Reawakening project initially led President Ravi to a Canadian bank and later to a telephone company, with a donation of $25,000 turning into $1million right at the outset of the campaign. Not bad, when considering that a mere $900 sat in the Project’s bank account at the start.
President Ravi likens leading RI to running a business. And it was his business-like attitude that guided him toward the raising of $15.2million in a California fund-raising drive, with the help of 4 local Rotary, for the good of tsunami victims. And with matching funds from RI’s Foundation arm, that figure rose to over $30million. In the course of his fund-raising efforts, a 32-member club of major donors was formed to provide aid in Nepal, a country recently ravaged by earthquakes, and beyond.
As the end of his term as RI President approaches, President Ravi reflects that the “power of the RI President” is not something to be taken lightly. When Rotary speaks, the world listens…. He knows that the power of his office plays a critical role in helping to achieve good for others in need worldwide – to maximize the results through service at the highest level. One such service that has come from his efforts is a project he launched to facilitate the relocation of priests from Mongolia to Chicago. And Rotary International is powerful in and of itself, President Ravi reminded us – powerful through the aggregate numbers of its members and powerful in the simple form of its international convention assembly year after year.
Speaking to the worldwide eradication of polio, RI began to focus on polio in the late 1970s with a major Rotary initiative, PolioPlus, taking shape in 1985. Only a handful of polio cases exist throughout the world today, and notably limited to only Pakistan and Afghanistan, due to the almost $12billion in Rotarian donations, matching funds and governmental grants having been invested in the fight. With these funds, in part, blood measurement and other medical equipment were purchased and plans implemented to put them into action through a problem-solving approach to these and related health issues, and notably with success in nations like Angola. President Ravi commented that in 2015 around 800 cases of measles were discovered, raising the possibility of a new RI initiative in the works for the coming years.
Other positive results through RI’s Foundation funding include the renovation or building of new hospitals in other countries having experienced natural catastrophes of major proportion where French and German authorities had a stake in the restructuring to follow. Also, with regard to the tsunami-torn coastal regions of southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean, select areas showed that out of 14,000 births in 2015 absolutely none resulted in death due to TB – a testament to the health care and oversight to the region due largely to Rotary funds and initiatives.
President Ravi’s parting thought was simple and yet poignant – that the personal connections we as Rotarians make are so very important, whether they be those we share with fellow Rotarians or those with whom we connect with outside of Rotary. He still recalls, fondly, meeting that single child he met once during his world travels and to whom so little meant so very much. President Ravi emphasized that there is always a new story to write to those that follow in our footsteps.
A short Question & Answer session followed and prompted President Ravi to suggest that we use our imagination to resolve our future problems, and to simply take a step-by-step approach in doing so. He asked us to dream and to innovative in our thinking, and not to focus only upon the numbers, the dollars, as a measurement of our success. He acknowledged the stability of and improvement upon Rotary membership as a challenge to be met in the future years, the power of making connections through social media and technology, but proclaimed RI to be in good shape and with $4billion in savings. He ended with a big “thank you” to Jack Bates for the connection they made so many years ago.
And with that, Lansing Rotary Club President Lisa stood front and center for the last time in her tenure and presented RI President Ravi with a Lansing Rotary Club flag, a copy of the Lansing Rotary Centennial book and a $10,000 donation to RI. In parting, she suggested that we as Rotarians embrace the Rotary Four-Way Test, cherish our friendships, practice tolerance and to be useful to those we serve and care about and for.
This weekly Rotary Club of Lansing meeting was adjourned at precisely 1:30pm. A reminder that our Club does not meet next week on July 1st due to the July 4th holiday weekend, but that our next meeting will be on Friday, July 8 th, 2016 at the Country Club of Lansing, 2200 Moores River Drive at the usual time.
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